Disney Animation's 'Lilo & Scratch' Short Runs on a New Pipeline That Mixes Hand-Drawn and CG Art in One Frame

Walt Disney Animation Studios built a new production pipeline for its Lilo & Scratch short that lets hand-drawn animators, CG animators and background painters each work in their own medium, often inside the same frame, according to Variety. In the six-minute short, the studio's first theatrical short in five years, CG characters sit in front of hand-painted watercolor backgrounds and hand-drawn characters share shots with CG ones.

• Artists choose their own medium. Co-director Fawn Veerasunthorn said, per Cartoon Brew, that the team worked out how "every artist, whether they use pencil, pixel, paintbrush, or Cintiq pen could all join in on this film."
• 2D and CG characters share shots. In one scene, a CG Scratch pulls a hand-drawn truck driver out of a CG truck, according to the studio.
• An early test switched a prop between mediums mid-action. The test paired a hand-drawn Scratch with a CG Stitch whose blaster turns from CG to hand-drawn as Scratch eats it. VFX supervisor Jeremy Sikorski said that after the test, "we were convinced we could do it, and we knew this was going to work."
• About 25 percent of the backgrounds come from the 2002 feature. The rest mix new hand-painted watercolors, Photoshop paintings, digital backgrounds and set extension.
• Stitch's original supervising animator returned. Alex Kupershmidt served as character animation lead on the short.

A hand-drawn Scratch and a CG Stitch share the same shots

Chief creative officer Jared Bush asked directors Fawn Veerasunthorn and Malcon Pierce for a comedy-forward Stitch short that could also serve as a playground for a new technique at Walt Disney Animation Studios. Sikorski said the most exciting part was to "merge these two worlds from Disney Animation, this old school Disney renaissance 2D aesthetic with our more modern CG pipeline."

Sikorski said the studio got a taste of the approach on Paperman and Once Upon a Studio. For this short, the team studied the original feature and built a "toolset that would allow artists to blend their talents," so artists working in any medium could "work all together" on the same project.

The hybrid approach shows up shot by shot:

• Watercolor sets, sculpted characters. A background can be hand-painted watercolor while the Lilo and Stitch characters in front of it are 3D sculptures.
• CG staging around 2D acting. The truck in the driver scene was built in CG, as were the scene's layout and scene planning, which gave the filmmakers additional flexibility, according to Disney's production breakdown.
• A recreated classic scene. Cartoon Brew reported that a recreated vinyl record scene paired hand-painted 2D backgrounds with CG versions of Lilo and Stitch, which the outlet called nearly indistinguishable from their hand-drawn counterparts.

Scanned 2002 watercolors, new paintings and Photoshop fill the backgrounds

Production designer Kevin Yang and the creative team visited the Disney Animation Research Library to study the original film's watercolor backgrounds in person and decide which could be used again. About 25 percent of the short's backgrounds are reused from the 2002 film, according to Disney.

Tia Kratter, Larry Wu and others painted more than a dozen new backgrounds, which the team combined with digital backgrounds and set extension to stay faithful to the original look. Veerasunthorn said artists picked their preferred medium: some new backgrounds were digitally painted in Adobe Photoshop to look like watercolor, while others were painted on paper.

Original Stitch talent works alongside the CG team

Kupershmidt, who supervised Stitch's animation on the 2002 feature, returned to animate scenes on paper, per Cartoon Brew. Chris Sanders voices Stitch again, and Maia Kealoha reprises Lilo from the 2025 live-action film, Deadline reported.

"The fact that we are able to get hand-drawn artists and CG animators working together is something that we're super proud of, because we used to be like either or," Veerasunthorn told Variety.

Pierce said at the short's Annecy preview, "Everything in this short was crafted by artists," a theme Cartoon Brew said ran across several panels that seemed to hint at AI without naming it. We previously covered how Netflix builds a GenAI animation studio.

Lilo & Scratch plays in theaters in front of Disney's Hexed, which Variety lists for release Nov. 25.