Disney Animation Returns to Lilo & Stitch With Hybrid 2D-3D Short

Stitch returns to the big screen on November 25, when Disney Animation's new short "Lilo & Scratch" opens in front of the studio's feature "Hexed." The six-minute film is the first "Lilo & Stitch" project from Walt Disney Animation Studios since the original 2002 feature, and the unit's first short in five years.

Directors Malcolm Pierce and Fawn Veerasunthorn open the film with a clip of the Three Stooges. The signal is deliberate: comic hijinks, anarchy and cartoon destruction lie ahead. The plot gives Stitch a new rival. Lilo brings home a kitten named Scratch and leaves the pet in Stitch's care while he watches the Stooges with glee. The cat quickly reveals a destructive streak to rival Lilo's beloved blue "dog," and the gags escalate from there.

"Stitch is awesome," Pierce said. "I feel like what I love is that he sort of lets his intrusive thoughts win, but he's kind of a troublemaker too, which is really fun. So that was just super exciting, just to see what we can do that could put Stitch in a situation where he can make the most mischievous and troublemaking choices."

How did the short come about?

The project began, according to Veerasunthorn, with an informal conversation. "When Jared Bush, [Walt Disney Animation Studios] chief creative officer, had this casual conversation with us — and I say casual because it happened in the hallway" about making a comedy-forward short "that showcases the fun of animation," she said, returning to Lilo and Stitch was a natural choice.

Veerasunthorn, who was in art school when the 2002 film came out, cited its bold comedy and "the character's deep desire to belong" as formative influences on her as an artist. She, Pierce and producer Nathan Curtis developed the premise around one question: would it be fun if chaotic Stitch had to take care of a mysterious cute cat?

Bush also asked the team to experiment with new techniques in the animation pipeline. That request shaped the short's most significant technical achievement.

What does the short change for Disney's pipeline?

The film merges hand-drawn and computer-generated animation within single frames. Backgrounds may be hand-painted watercolor, while the Lilo and Stitch characters placed against them are 3D sculptures.

"The most exciting thing was to kind of merge these two worlds from Disney Animation, this old school Disney renaissance 2D aesthetic with our more modern CG pipeline," said VFX supervisor Jeremy Sikorski. Earlier short-form projects such as "Paper Man" and "Once Upon a Studio" offered hints of the approach. "This felt like a real opportunity to somewhat officialize and push things even further."

The team studied the original feature and built a toolset allowing artists to blend their talents regardless of medium. Sikorski described the goal as "a production pipeline that no matter the artist's chosen mediums, they could work in the project and work all together — quite often in the same exact frame — in a totally revolutionary and new way of working."

An early test proved the concept: a hand-drawn Scratch and a CG Stitch holding a blaster, in a sequence where the blaster transitions from CG to hand-drawn as Scratch eats it. "When we looked at the finished results of this test, we were convinced we could do it," Sikorski said.

Backgrounds were produced both ways. "Some of these are digitally painted in Photoshop to look like watercolor, and some are actually hand painted on paper traditionally," Veerasunthorn said. She added that getting hand-drawn artists and CG animators working together was a point of pride, because the disciplines used to be "either or."

Who is Scratch?

Scratch's initial design was more mysterious and strange, but the filmmakers made her cuter so audiences would embrace her. She also needed her own musical voice, which fell to composers Haim Mazar and Grace Fisher. "She definitely has, like, a heavy metal voice, which is very unique to this short," Fisher said.

The comedy-action score draws on Carl Stalling and Tom and Jerry cartoons. Mazar said the challenge was creating music that felt fresh and contemporary while sounding familiar from the first note, "welcome to our ohana, so to speak." The score blends an orchestra with closely miked small ensembles, shakers and Hawaiian guitars, produced, in Mazar's words, "like a record that you would hear nowadays."

Pierce said the team wanted to remind audiences how hard-edged Stitch can be beneath the ubiquity of his merchandise. Veerasunthorn framed the pairing as a duel of one-upmanship: "We always think Stitch would say, 'I got this,' and then Scratch would be like 'Hold my beer, I got more.'" The first cut ran about 10 minutes before jokes were cut.

The short's hybrid pipeline now stands as a tested model for future Disney Animation projects.