THE APEX TIMES
The Walt Disney Animation Studios short, arriving theatrically this Thanksgiving, repurposes parts of its 2002 film’s look while building a fresh hand-drawn and CG workflow meant to preserve the “Disney Renaissance” aesthetic and expand creative flexibility.
Walt Disney Animation Studios is betting that a familiar character and a familiar style can still generate new momentum. “Lilo & Scratch,” a theatrical animated short set to open this Thanksgiving, is being positioned as the studio’s first short release in five years and as a showcase for a new production approach that blends hand-drawn and computer-generated animation while preserving the visual identity of the original “Lilo & Stitch.”
The plot centers on Lilo and her “ohana,” or family unit, as the blue alien’s world is upended by the introduction of Scratch, a mischievous, mysterious cat. Before Lilo leaves the house “for approximately six hours” to run errands, she entrusts Stitch with caring for the creature. Stitch’s role is not a cameo novelty. Chris Sanders reprises his voice work from the 2002 animated feature, and Maia Kealoha reprises Lilo’s voice from the 2025 live-action “Lilo & Stitch.”
Disney framed the project as more than character fan service. Jared Bush, the studio’s chief creative officer, decided it was time for a comedy-forward Stitch-centered short, in part because of how deeply the character remains embedded inside the studio culture. The studio also recruited Fawn Veerasunthorn and Malcon Pierce to develop the premise, starting from a pool of about 18 ideas. According to Veerasunthorn, the team narrowed the concept after the word “cat” sparked immediate buy-in.
At the production level, the short’s biggest headline is a technical one. “Lilo & Scratch” is described as remaining authentic to the original’s style by pairing hand-drawn animation with CG techniques, enabled by a new pipeline developed by a cross-functional team. Disney’s vfx supervisor Jeremy Sikorski said the studio had already seen promise on earlier short-form experiments, including “Paperman” and “Once Upon a Studio,” and that “Lilo & Scratch” was an opportunity to push further while keeping the audience-visible aesthetics that fans associate with the franchise.
The studio’s stated goal was to merge two animation worlds. Sikorski specifically described the project as combining Disney Renaissance-era 2D hand-drawn work with a CG pipeline. One illustrative example involves a scene in which a hand-drawn truck driver is pulled out of a CG truck by Scratch. The truck, scene layout, and planning are said to be completed in CG, giving the filmmakers additional flexibility even as the on-screen look stays grounded in the hand-drawn feel.
Backgrounds received similar attention. Disney’s production notes say the creative team visited the Disney Animation Research Library to study watercolor backgrounds from the original 2002 film. About 25 percent of the short’s backgrounds are reused from that earlier work, while more than a dozen new background paintings were created by Tia Kratter, Larry Wu, and others. In addition, digital backgrounds and set extensions are used to expand scenes without breaking the look, blending old and new hand-painted watercolors to keep continuity with the feature film’s art direction.
Veerasunthorn said the team also wanted to give artists the option to work in their preferred medium, citing both digitally painted backgrounds designed to resemble watercolor (for example, using Photoshop) and fully hand-painted works on paper. The project’s collaboration extended beyond the artists and into the people who shaped the original franchise. Alex Kupershmidt, supervising animator on Stitch in the 2002 film, returned as character animation lead, while Pierce said he also brought in Byron Howard, the character designer from “Lilo & Stitch,” to help refine the comedic timing.
Pierce described the studio environment as unusually open for risk-taking across disciplines, saying many people across “a pencil, a pixel, or a paintbrush” wanted to contribute. He and Veerasunthorn characterized their role as encouraging the team to test the edges of what might be possible. In parallel, the score team worked to honor the original film’s musical identity while building something that feels continuous to the viewer even if it is technically segmented into multiple cues.
Disney’s releases name Haim Mazar and Grace Fisher as the composers for “Lilo & Scratch.” The pair were able to work with a nine-piece Hawaiian ensemble and a 70-piece orchestra in Los Angeles. Mazar said the music is arranged as wall-to-wall, designed to play without noticeable breaks, with six or seven cues that transition back to back and with only a few spots featuring source music. Both composers described the short as a challenge of fitting new writing into existing creative boundaries set by the original Alan Silvestri score.
Alphabet’s Google is making a major adjustment to how it handles high-precision map data for South Korea, following conditions set by regulators after a long-running dispute.
Rothschild & Co Redburn downgraded Broadcom (AVGO) to Neutral and trimmed its price target to $398 from $595, while the market’s broader target reference in the same note still implied about $533.
A Wall Street note highlighted by Yahoo Finance suggests the economic outlines feeding the Federal Reserve are getting more difficult to interpret, complicating the central bank’s task of calibrating policy.
Semiconductor exchange-traded funds were among the sources of institutional demand, even after a market note flagged Intel’s shares as trading well above an estimated “GF Value.”
The retailer’s U.S. supply-chain effort adds SGS to its third-party laboratory assignment list for apparel testing, aiming to bolster support for fashion garment categories.
In a market-focused update cited by Yahoo Finance, Bank of America flagged a new risk tied to Asian equity markets, while noting that policy responses can shift sentiment within hours.
The chip-and-infrastructure company gave back part of a Thursday jump, with traders shifting attention to Nvidia’s next earnings report as a test for the broader rotation into AI-related stocks.
The company’s stock has fallen sharply over a month, as U.S. attention turns toward how Nvidia understood (and served) its customer base, according to market coverage. Dan Ives also highlighted a bullish valuation view tied to founder Jensen Huang.
A Yahoo Finance piece tied Nvidia’s latest turbulence to a possible “exit” by Jensen Huang, arguing it could change how investors price the semiconductor leader. Nvidia did not provide details in the article cited by Yahoo.
A new round of scrutiny over advanced NVIDIA chip shipments and Chinese AI training activity abroad is raising fresh questions about how much compute-dependent software companies can count on steady GPU supply.
Comments
Community guidelines. Comments may be removed for violations.
Loading comments...