Stitch Loves Hawaii!!!

Stitch LOVES Hawai'i!!!

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Lilo is a sweet little Hawaiian girl who's a quite peculiar: she has an off-beat take on life, and is a little obsessed about taking care of downtrodden animals. Each day, she collects all the soda cans along the beach. She then takes the cans to the local recycling center, turns them in for cash, then uses that money to buy fish food -she gets in an outrigger canoe, paddles out into the middle of the harbor, then begins feeding the fish in the ocean.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the galaxy, we meet career criminal Stitch. An incorrigible unrepentant felon, this six-armed alien stands before the galactic tribunal. Just as the judge is about to pronounce sentence, Stitch escapes. Zooming through the stars in his cool 1950s-style spaceship (complete with fins), Stitch tries to elude the two bounty hunters who've been sent out to recapture him. Hoping to ditch the cops, the six-armed con crash-lands on Earth.

Where on Earth? Hawaii. To be specific, near the beach.

Stitch's only hope for eluding capture is to blend in with the locals. However - due to his bug eyes and blue fur- there's no way that he'll pass for human. But then Stitch notices that -if he folds up one set of arms under his fur- he can sort of pass for a dog. A really ugly, weird looking dog with blue fur.

At least, that's what the Animal Control Officer thinks when he captures Stitch. So there he is -back behind bars, just days away from being put to sleep- when Lilo comes into the pound and decides to adopt the crazy looking canine.

Ladies and Germs.... Disney Proudly Presents:::

Lilo & Stitch

Directed by: Chris Sanders and Dean Deblois
Written by: Chris Sanders
Music by: Alan Silvestri (score), Elvis Presley (songs)

CAST

Lilo...Daveigh Chase
Stitch... Chris Sanders
David Kawena... Jason Scott Lee
Nani (Lilo's sister)... Tia Carrere
Mell/Maid in Lilo's home... Laurie Metcalf
Jumba (a bounty hunter)... David Ogden Stiers
Pleakley... Kevin McDonald
Cobra Bubbles... Ving Rhames
Grand Councilwomen... Zoe Caldwell
Captain Gantu... Kevin Richardson
Alien Judge... Judi Dench

INTERESTING Lilo & Stitch FACTS

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The story was cooked up by one of Disney's top story guys, Chris Sanders (The Lion King, Mulan), who created an illustrated story outline that everyone fell in love with. If you want a sense of what Sanders can do, check out his work in "The Art of the Lion King" book.

Chris Sanders is also providing the voice for Stitch.

Lilo and Stitch is not a musical, though Disney has bought the rights to six Elvis songs, because Lilo likes to hula dance on the beach to Elvis music: "Hound Dog", "Devil in Disguise", "Burning Love", "I'm Coming Home", "Stuck on You" and "Heartbreak Hotel".

A traditional Hawaiian song that was written by Queen Liliuokalani, the last Hawaiian monarch, and entitled "Aloha O'e", will be performed by Tia Carrere. Alan Silvestri completed the recording of the score in late November 2001.

Disney has supposedly VERY high hopes for this movie. It has been the praise of Disney animators for a while, and they're saying this is the film that's going to bring back the animated feature in a BIG way.

Art from Lilo and Stitch was unveiled in the Disney Animation building of the new Disney's California Adventure in January 2001. Stitch is said to look like a cute baby panda bear with fangs. One scene displayed shows a female alien with tentacles for hair and an alien with one eye and a gumdrop-shaped head talking about how to get Stitch back. They apparently are police agents.

Someone asks why they can't blow up the Earth and the gumdrop alien replies that they can't because it is a nature preserve for the endangered mosquito (they are breeding them here).

Stitch doesn't speak for most of the movie -the film is not told through snappy dialogue but rather through cleverly staged visual set pieces.

Lilo & Stitch is the first animated feature in years from Walt Disney Studios that's based on an original story. The tale was crafted by noted storyboard artist Chris Sanders. He's the genius who came up with the staging for many of your favorite moments in Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King . Chris is making his directorial debut with Lilo & Stitch.

The workspace of animators working on this project in Orlando has been decorated in an island motif for inspiration. A big "Aloha" banner was placed at the entrance of the animation area, with tropical themed party decorations like paper pineapples and leis in every cubicle. Some genuine Hawaiian artifacts like tiki totems and lamps were also scattered around the place.

To open the movie, the Disney symbol comes up in a different way -the Walt Disney Pictures at the bottom is in Alien decoding and the line that goes around the castle blinks "Beep Beep".

Disney switched from Kansas to Kaua'i for the setting of its upcoming movie thanks, in large part, to a Garden Island tour guide and the 'ohana spirit of the Islands that he emphasized while the writer-directors were visiting several years ago. "Chris had a map (of Hawai'i) on the wall when we were still working on the story," said Dean DeBlois, 31. "Chris kept thinking that these small towns on Kaua'i he visited; they were perfect in size, with obvious beauty—and had the spirit of 'ohana."

Clark Spencer, 39, who is making his debut as producer with Lilo, adds that "'ohana was not part of the original script. On a research trip (in Hawai'i), everybody spoke of 'ohana. For Stitch and his transformation, what would be better than 'ohana? He comes to know what it means to have family. It struck a chord and really resonates in a wonderful way. It will be great for cultures outside of the USA who might not have heard about it." Sanders is forever grateful to a tour guide he refers to only as Francis, "who knew everybody everywhere we went on Kaua'i, which made me realize what a tight-knit community Hawai'i was.

The idea was that there were broader implications of 'ohana; that Stitch, the ultimate orphan with no parents, would come to be part of an 'ohana. We rewrote our entire film." DeBlois said that Stitch was all about being an isolated sort, from a broken family. "The great thing about 'ohana is that family is not defined by parents or uncles. It can be a whole community," he said. "It works well with Stitch as part of a nonconventional family. It's an idea that's accepted, encouraged and celebrated."

"It originally was a story pitch, a children's book," continued Chris Sanders, of the screenplay he co-wrote and co-directed with Dean DeBlois. "But when you talk about aliens, people get in their own minds a particular image; so we had to create illustrations as kind of a visual blueprint of where we would be going." In the original version, Stitch, a misfit dog resulting from a genetic experiment, originally was to crash-land from space into a forest, where he would be ostracized by woodland creatures and forced to live life on his own in rural Kansas.

"Inherent in animated stories is the fact that heroes and villains are usually black and white; heroes win, villains die," said Sanders of formulaic fantasy tales. "But heroes are hard for normal people to aspire to; they're too good. This film begins with the capture of a villain, the would-be hero; every character has good and bad qualities; the bad aspire to be good, but there are frailties." Because Sanders was an Elvis Presley fan, the movie incorporates The King's music. "In creating Lilo's character, we have her as a devotee of records, gyrating to Elvis with an old-fashioned record player instead of CDs. Elvis is the soundtrack of her life." Thanks to 'Traxer' for the alert.

When Chris Sanders, the co-writer/co-director of Lilo & Stitch, originally pitched his story to Thomas Schumacher, president of Walt Disney Feature Animation, he did it with a 15-page illustrated book that he had created to tell the story and suggest the look of the film. Schumacher gave Sanders the go ahead on the project with one condition--the final film must remain true to Sanders' original illustrated treatment. Sanders' original drawings suggested a watercolor approach, and art director Ric Sluiter was quick to realize that the loose style of the medium would best capture the lush, organic, overgrown and luminous feeling of the Hawaiian Islands, the setting for the film. There was just one dilemma: watercolor backgrounds had not been used extensively in a Disney animated feature film in over six decades!

"The feeling in the animation community was that it was now impossible to make an entire animated feature film with watercolor backgrounds," said Sanders. The medium was commonly used in the early days at Disney on such films as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , Pinocchio, Bambi and Dumbo, but background artists eventually turned to the more forgiving oil-based gouache as the preferred choice. Gouache backgrounds could be completed faster and could be fixed or altered if necessary, whereas watercolor backgrounds are far more unforgiving.

Facing their challenge head on, the team did a test by creating two identical backgrounds--one using gouache and one with watercolors. The result was that using the lush, beautiful watercolor backgrounds suited the style of the film more than the gouache backgrounds. Working together, the background team experimented with watercolors and discovered new ways to make it practical and possible for the film.

The final film contains over 1,200 amazing watercolor backgrounds, each a work of art in its own right.

"The saddest thing is that some of the backgrounds go by so quickly," notes Sanders. He added, "We couldn't have done this without the Florida background team. They are absolutely amazing. Near the end of the production they were creating watercolor backgrounds faster than they [used to] create gouache backgrounds." With Lilo & Stitch, the background team created incredible works of art, and rediscovered an almost lost animated art form along the way. As a tribute to the last animated films to use watercolor backgrounds, Dumbo makes a special appearance!

Several inside jokes are hidden in the movie: for example, a poster of Mulan is on the wall of Lilo's bedroom, and a picture of the Magic Kingdom can be seen when Lilo and Stitch look at postcards in the street.

Following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the Orlando Weekly reported on September 20, 2001 that "Disney's extraterrestrial animated feature, Lilo & Stitch, also may get a makeover. After all, the climax of this feature-length 'toon, produced entirely at the backstage animation facility at Disney/MGM Studios, was built around the then-comical notion that a cute little alien would sneak on board a 747, then take the jumbo jet for a joy ride through the towers of Honolulu. That sequence, which had gone over great with test audiences, now may be sacrificed."

Disney supposedly asked screenwriters to rewrite the last scenes and find a twist that would affect neither the movie's continuity nor the designer's work. Nevertheless, it was confirmed in November 2001 that "the climax with the airplane has not been removed from the film... they replaced the airplane with a spaceship which Stitch takes for a joyride."

"If there is a Disney neighborhood, this film can be found somewhere between Bambi and Dumbo," said co-director Chris Sanders in December 2001. Dean DeBlois adds: "The characters are very cute and very roundish," echoing Disney's classic '30s and early '40s style. That softer, retro look is enhanced by watercolor backgrounds, which Disney abandoned after Dumbo in 1941. "Stitch is rotten, and the entire galaxy is after him," DeBlois commented. He also described Chris Sanders' style saying, "I don't think I've ever seen Chris do a drawing that has a sharp angle. His characters tend to be very grounded, bottom-heavy, either in a poetic or chubby way."

"We always wanted to make Stitch walk the line between cute and upsetting," explained Dean DeBlois. "He would have his moments of just being completely repulsive, and yet he can also at certain moments be the most adorable thing."

Writer and director Chris Sanders, who got his start in the business as a modeler on Muppet Babies, commented that "with this film we really wanted to go back to Disney's roots. We looked at the simplicity and warmth of films like Dumbo and Bambi and the way the characters interacted with each other. There was a purity and nostalgia that appealed to us." Sanders says that the crew opted to place their emphasis on character development and relationships instead of technical marvels or pushing new boundaries.

"We wanted to slow the world down a bit," he says. "We were really attracted to showing the 'gray zone' in our characters. There's no one character in our film that is pure evil or pure good. Everybody has moments of honorable intent. We were able to create characters that are believable because they are fallible yet they try very hard."

The Orlando Weekly announced in December 2001 that Disney Television animation already was hard at work putting together a direct-to-video sequel to the yet-to-be-released feature, which test audiences evidently just couldn't get enough of. Variety announced officially in February 2002 that a TV series will be followed in 2004 by a video premiere movie sequel.

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TIA CARRERE INTERVIEW

From Prevue Magazine

Q: You are providing a voice for Disney's Lilo & Stitch, what can you tell us about it?

It's so cute! It's set in Hawaii and I play the guardian of my little sister. I've been working on it for two years. It's a much heavier film than you have ever seen from Disney, in that the girl's parents aren't present. You just sort of infer that it's the older sister taking care of the younger sister. I'm working hard, trying to get jobs, and there is a social services worker checking on the welfare of the child. I'm constantly trying to keep my head above water, so that Social Services doesn't take my sister away!

Q: Social Services? That's a bit different than your average Disney film.

It's very modern, and it's also very charming, and very poignant.

Q: So how does it feel to be a Disney character?

It's great! I've always wanted to be a Disney cartoon character. I was really upset when Mulan slipped through there.

Q: Did you hope to get that?

I had heard about Mulan and thought it would be great. It has the same casting director as Lilo & Stitch and apparently she tried to get in touch with me, but I was in Slovakia shooting a film. When I walked in for the first session of Lilo & Stitch, she told me that she had tried to get in touch with me for Mulan. In the end, it all came around for a great project. Anyway, I'm more from Hawaii than I am for Mainland China. Besides, I get to sing in it too! I get to sing a Hawaiian song to my little sister.

Q: What do you sing?

I get to sing Aloha O`e, which is a traditional Hawaiian song that was written by Queen Liliuokalani, the last Hawaiian monarch.

Q: With all your travels, where are you recording Lilo & Stitch?

While I'm working on Relic Hunter, they'll pop in and say, "we've just got to get a line, or two." I was working out at rock quarry, an hour-and-a-half outside Toronto and there was huge machinery passing by. Now, my trailer's wonderful, but it's not exactly soundproof. We had this whole recording set-up in the trailer and we were waiting for the rock quarry trucks to pass, so we can get one clean line.

Q: They actually use that line and it's not redubbed later?

No, no, they are amazing. They piece it all together. Jason Scott Lee was in London, so the directors and producers flew to London to record him there. When I was in Paris, they needed a line, so they could show the animation to their hire-ups at Disney, so I was in Paris, so they had to come to Paris.

Q: Do they use your physical movements at all?

Although the character girl doesn't look like me, they videotape me as I am speaking, so they can see how my face moves, how my mouth moves.

Q: How is working for Disney?

It's a wonderful atmosphere, very relaxed. They crack a joke, I crack a joke.

Q: Have you had any input into your character?.

I really get to inject a lot into it. I've felt very free to inject some Hawaiianisms into the film. In Hawaii, there is a dialect we speak called Pidgin. It's a bit like broken English, but it's not that you are saying different words, it's just the way that you say them. It has a different intonation. I asked them if they wanted Pidgin, since this was supposed to be Hawaiian, and they said "sure, as long as we can understand it." So, I started improvising some dialog. I gave them some local Hawaiianisms that would still hold up to the general public, but that local Hawaiians would get a chuckle because it is so "on the money" for local people.

CLARK SPENCER INTERVIEW

David Manning from CHUD.COM sat down with Lilo & Stitch's producer in May 2002, for what turned out to be a fantastic interview!

Q: The first thing that struck me about this film was that Disney doesn't really have any music in the film: it's all Elvis. How did you handle the rights issues?

Clark Spencer: You know, when (Director Chris Sanders) pitched this concept for the movie, he used Elvis as a characteristic to describe Lilo. We never meant to have Elvis music in the film. He just said "Lilo's this little girl. She's lonely. She carries around a vinyl record player and she listens to Elvis music." But as the film started to evolve, we really gravitated towards that idea of Elvis and said "wouldn't it be fun to put some music in?"

So first, of course, you have to go though the legal department within Disney and contact the people who own the rights and talk to the Graceland estate, and there was some trepidation in terms of "would we really be able to pull this off?" But I have to tell you, everyone we approached was so intrigued by the idea that we were going to put Elvis music in a Disney animated film... that it would take this music to a whole new generation of kids, that there were no barriers - truly - no barriers.

When we pitched the film, we talked conceptually about what we wanted to do and showed that the idea was to portray Elvis in this great light and not in a negative light, everybody just lined right up and said "OK, tell us what you need and what you want, and we'll be there for you." In fact, there's one sequence in the film where Lilo teaches Stitch how to be a model citizen, and she uses Elvis as that example.

We had to do things that you're just never allowed to do without a ton of permission: Show an Elvis picture and mention his name, put Stitch into the white jumpsuit from the Hawaii concert, and actually take "Devil in Disguise" and mix it around - the guitar solo comes in the song after the second verse, but we needed it to come after the first verse, so we moved things around - no problems whatsoever.

So we were very fortunate. No doubt, going in, we thought "would this really be able to work?" but once we got in there and started to talk to people, everyone was very excited.

Q: So, did you license it...

Clark Spencer: Yeah, for the film, we did. We licensed those songs. There are six Elvis songs in the movie that we licensed for the film, and we went off and did two covers.... Five of those six (Elvis) songs are going to be on the soundtrack, so they gave us the rights to put those songs on to the soundtrack. Obviously, everybody gets their piece... But it's...

Q: Profit sharing agreement?

Clark Spencer: Absolutely, which is very exciting, really. As far as we know, nobody has ever been able to get that many masters on to an album that wasn't RCA ... you know, RCA owns most of the masters, so to have it not to be on a RCA label is a pretty big step.

(Note: According to published reports, Lilo & Stitch had to undergo a heavy edit following the 9/11 attacks. Reportedly, the film's final chase scene involved Stitch stealing a 747 from the Honolulu airport, and flying it through the city itself, dodging things like skyscrapers, buildings & such.)

Q: I understand there were a lot of changes made after the September 11th attacks, and that a sequence had to be significantly altered as a result. How did you approach that problem, and how did it affect the bottom line of the picture?

Clark Spencer: You know, September 11th happened. We were on east coast time, and within a couple of hours, we realized we had to make a change in the film. There was no meeting - It wasn't even a conversation in some ways - it was just sort of obvious, out of respect, that this part of the film needed to change, but we still needed a rescue. And so, the directors and myself went into a room and tried to figure out how we were going to make this change and be very smart about it, because we're at the very end of our production process.

I'm very fortunate to work with people like Chris and Dean (DeBlois, Co-Director). They come from story, and they can surgically go in and come up with a way of doing it, which doesn't mean you have to alter everything significantly.

Basically, we went in and took what was an airplane and transformed it into a spaceship. We were able to keep much of the same animation and much of the same moves that had already been choreographed and planned for that sequence and just kinda trade the two out. We were lucky because we had never talked about how Jumba and Pleakley arrived on earth, so they could go back to the spaceship that was just hiding in the woods, and the rest of it could just happen from there.

What's amazing is that... When you have a moment in time at the end of a film, everyone's really ramped up, and they're able to push stuff through very, very quickly... And when you have everybody knowing that this is the right thing to do, out of respect for that moment in time, people just work their butts off. And, to be honest with you, our schedule change, which should have taken us several months to do, probably took us about 3 and a half weeks. We were fortunate, because we had already planned our film so that it was going to get done early no matter what for the summer release. So, we had the luxury of time to finish it.

Q: Was the Airplane footage ever put together? Do you think we'll ever see it on a DVD someday, maybe as a special feature or some such?

Clark Spencer: There may be. We're starting to talk about that kind of stuff right now, it terms of what types of scenes from the film that were originally done will now be seen on the DVD... there's actually several in the film that changed as we were making the movie. It's a natural part of our process. Because it takes so long to make them, we put 'em up, and we decide what's working and what's not. So, there'll probably be several things on the DVD.

Q: I understand there are already a sequel in development over at Disney's TV animation division, along with a Children's television show. Are you involved in those projects?

Clark Spencer: Yeah, we are, a little bit. It's interesting. In our process, it takes so long to do these things, so you've got to commit early. Even before the film comes out, we've already started development for a sequel for the TV animation division to actually animate, as well as a TV series. Our involvement has been more in the setup -- what these two films will be about storywise. There's a whole different team of people that'll actually go off and direct and make them. We wont be involved in that part of the process. But in terms of the initial ideas, and what's going to happen to those characters, we've been intimately involved with that part.

It's kind of fun, but it's weird at the same moment. Your film hasn't even been released, and people are already talking about how it's going to have this longevity. It's the first time for us that we've stepped back and realized that the movie may actually have a life of its own. You don't assume that. You just assume that you're making your movie, and it'll come out, and then one day it'll be gone and nobody will ever talk about it again. But you forget that we're part of this very large company, with the Disney name on it, that will go out and use these properties in many different ways.

Q: Another thing I've noticed is the marketing of the film - it's tone is almost Anti-Disney. I'm curious how the culture of your team interacted with the other people in the organization who actually made those wonderful films you're skewering. Was there any friction? How was it handled or soothed, or dealt with?

Clark Spencer: It's funny, because we started talking in October about the fact that Lilo & Stitch is a tough movie to market: The idea is not immediately gettable, the title's not something your familiar with, and the story is not something your familiar with at all. So, how do you get it out there? We talked to the marketing department, and they came up with the idea that we needed a "pre-awareness campaign" as we started to call it.

So the directors went off and said, "wouldn't it be funny... since Stitch is going to become a part of the other characters and part of the (Disney) legacy, if we actually had Stitch invade these films like he invades the family in the movie?"

So they came up with the first one, which was Stitch being presented at that moment in LION KING where it's supposed to be baby Simba and it ends up being Stitch. And we were kinda cracking ourselves up, in some sense... We thought it was such a great idea... but we knew there'd be a lot of hurdles to get over. It was such an "out there" idea, and it clearly was going to step on many toes.

Again, and I hate to make it sound all so positive, but its true: as we started to show it to people, I think the idea was so solid -- people got it so quickly and thought it was so unique -- that everyone basically let their guard down, and said "We have to do it." It was sort of one-by-one, 'cause first we pitched it to the marketing department, and we thought "well, maybe they would say 'you can't do that'" and they said "Fine." And then we pitched it to some of the executives. And we thought they might say "No." and they said "Fine." And then we pitched it to the Legal department, to see what issues they would have, and they said "OK." And we finally went to the top of the company, to Roy (Disney) and Michael Eisner and said, "Here's what we want to do. How do you guys feel about it." And again, they loved it.

Stitch is a unique character. I don't think there are a lot characters you could do this kind of a campaign with. But it just worked. All the timing lined up right. And there's no doubt we have a film that you needed to have a smart, clever, unique campaign to help launch it. It's a competitive summer, and you have to have something that's going to make kids say early on "that's movie I want to see" and I don't think in today's world you can just rely just on having a trailer or two out there in the marketplace to get people excited about your movie. You have to have something else that kind of lures them in early on, so they're out there talking about it and getting a buzz going. It's the only way to survive, in some ways.

CHRIS SANDER & CLARK SPENCER INTERVIEW

The Washington Post held a Q&A session with director/writer Chris Sanders and producer Clark Spencer on May 1, 2002.

Q: It seems as though Stitch will soon be known as the bad-ass of Disney animation. Seeing as Disney usually goes the "lovable character" route, I was wondering if you had any trouble convincing the powers at Disney to buy into the idea of Stitch.

Chris: This is a character that does defy Disney conventions and everybody, including the president of animation was so behind the film. We all saw it as a step in a new direction. Tom Shumacker in particular kept it a secret for a while so we were fully able to work out the quirks before we rolled it out and show a lot a people.

Clark: I think Tom was very smart in how he approached the project in terms of protecting it in its incubation period, so by the time it rolled out, the entire idea was very gettable -- and people would understand that it's unconventional, but very reminiscent of the films of the 1930s and 40s.

Q: How do you feel about the creation of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film?

Chris: I'm really excited because as everybody knows, these are as legitimate as every other film and take as much talent, yet it's always difficult to compete with a live action film -- because they are very different while just as legitimate. So it's a very welcome one.

Clark: I would concur with Chris. Fantastic.

Q: I had a question about the process of making Lilo and Stitch. As you initially came up with the idea 17 years ago, I was wondering how much of that original idea was part of the final product? Was there anything pertaining to the movie either of you wished you could have accomplished, but had to sacrifice?

Chris: The character of Stitch is largely unchanged. His design was updated and his situation was largely changed, but the character retained all the things I thought of from the beginning. A frightening character with an inner innocence that would develop throughout the story. And that's one of the most exciting aspects of the movie. We have a lot of stuff that didn't get in the movie. We have many different scenes that had to be removed because of time constraints. There was one with LIlo reading to Stitch about mummies at the breakfast table -- one of her fondest dreams. She pointed to out to Stitch that Eva Peron was one of the greatest mummifications of all time and that had to be cut out. In a lot of cases, characters have a history that you're never going to see. And Lilo and Stitch are no exception.

Clark: The process takes so long, we're already in production for a sequel and TV series. We'd like to take some ideas that couldn't be used in the film.

Q: What should someone study in order to break into the film animation business? How does one get an entry level position?

Chris: There's a lot of different types of animation now, so it's wonderful in that you can approach it in different ways. Drawing by hand are still valid ways. Even if you choose to go into the computer aided side, the space you deal with on a computer screen is no different than those on paper. In all cases you eventually are going to bring a portfolio to a studio somewhere, so you need to become skilled. You can find out what each studio is looking for by giving them a call.

Q: Did you have any trouble getting permission to use the Elvis songs in the movie?

Clark: We were really fortunate. The idea of Elvis coming in to the movie raised concerns. But when the idea was pitched to the record companies and Graceland estate, they immediately embraced the idea -- because it reaches out to a whole new generation of fans. We had an opportunity to show the film to Graceland about four months ago. And they were thrilled.

Q: What was is like working for Disney? Is there a "Disney formula" you had to work within? How much creativity does Disney provide you?

Chris: The great thing about working for Disney as an artist is that the sky is the limit as far as what you want to bring to the party. We wanted to break with convention and formula wherever we could. The studio completely welcomed that. I think we'll see more of that in the future as we search for different kinds of stories to tell.

Q: Is it just me, or is Stitch reminiscent of a Gremlin?

Chris: There are lots of qualities to Stitch. I think they're referring to the movie Gremlins. Not deliberately, but he does share characteristics. I think he shares most of his heritage with bats. I think there couldn't be a more alien species on the planet. I also got rid of the idea of having pupils... he has these glossy black eyes that are actually really expressive. I think sometimes giving an odd character black eyes allows you to read emotions into that character more easily.

Chris: I'm super thrilled that everybody has seen this film to be different, because it is. It is a very bold step and very emotionally charged film. Everyone should see it if they have an interest. They'll have a thoroughly fanstastic time.

Clark: I think Chris is right in terms of the film being completely different, but that emotionally charged component is something we see as a surprise, but it is still reminiscent of Bambi and Dumbo. So, it is very similar to what Walt and his team did back then. So we hope to give people something they expect and something they don't expect -- both at the same time.