"Can I Do It on Paper?": How "Lilo & Scratch" Brought Disney's Hand-Drawn Artists and CG Animators Into the Same Frame

Before a single character appears on screen, Lilo & Scratch makes a promise to longtime Disney Animation fans. The new Walt Disney Animation Studios short opens with the nostalgic blue castle logo, a sight that hasn't greeted audiences ahead of a new Disney Animation release in decades. "That surprisingly just happened," said director Malcon Pierce. "That was one of those things where in our first week, it was like, 'Oh, we should totally do the blue castle.' And then it was in there."

"It's important to us to open the short film giving a wink of, like, remember the feeling? And it's going to be something new in this journey," added director Fawn Veerasunthorn.

"That was kind of the fun for the whole thing," Pierce said, "really trying to find the familiar and the new of it all."

That balance runs through every part of Lilo & Scratch, Disney Animation's first Stitch project since the 2002 original. In the short, Lilo introduces a mysterious cat named Scratch as the newest member of the family, then heads off to run errands, leaving Stitch in charge of a creature even more chaotic than he is. Chris Sanders, the creator of Lilo & Stitch, returns as the voice of Stitch, while Maia Kealoha, Lilo in the 2025 live-action film, voices Lilo. The short arrives in theaters November 25th ahead of Disney's Hexed. During a recent press day, I spoke with the directors and composers about how they made it.

Shorts that play before Disney features rarely get their own marketing, but Lilo & Scratch has a standalone theatrical poster. Veerasunthorn found one in the wild. "I actually ran into one at AMC Burbank, and I took a million photos," she said.

"It's crazy," added Pierce. "When we started, we didn't have a plan for it to be in front of Hexed. We really were just trying to make something really cool. And then when they let us know that they were going to put it in the theater, we were super excited, because I think the impact on a big screen is so important with this one. It goes so big that it's really fun to see it and hear it in that scale."

The big screen also shows off a deliberate throwback. During the press day presentation, VFX supervisor Jeremy Sikorski explained that the team matched the original film's 1.66:1 aspect ratio, which makes the switch to a wider ratio for Hexed that much more noticeable.

The biggest story behind Lilo & Scratch is how it was made. Disney Animation built a new production pipeline that lets hand-drawn and CG animation live side by side, sometimes in the same frame. Alex Kuperschmidt, who supervised the animation of Stitch on the original film, was one of the first artists to see what that meant.

"There was a moment where we were issuing a shot to Alex Kuperschmidt in which he actually didn't know that he was going to be able to do it in hand-drawn and thought we were crazy," Pierce recalled. "There's this great scene where Stitch spits out Pudge into this bucket, and you could see his face. He was like, 'What are you guys talking about?' And then we're like, 'You're going to animate it.' He's like, 'Yeah, but I don't animate in CG.' When he found out we wanted him to animate in 2D, he lit up. And then he asked, 'Can I animate on paper? Can I do it on paper?' We were like, 'Yeah.'"

"I think that was sort of happening all over the place on the short, with people like, 'Can I do it like this?'" Pierce continued. "And Jeremy, our VFX supervisor, and the team were really pulling away any barrier and just saying, 'Yes, you can do whatever you want to do in whatever medium you feel like is going to be best, and we'll figure out how to make it fit into the pipeline. You don't worry about that.'"

For Veerasunthorn, the project gave the studio a rare chance to bring together artists who usually work apart. "We have the crew whose skills straddle both worlds, and never before were we able to invite them both to work on the same project, and frankly on the same frame even," she said. "I think that's what's so special about this project: to bring people together in the studio, and what unified them is the love for the original film."

In the presentation, Pierce summed up the goal: "Whether it be using a pencil, or a pixel, or a paintbrush, everybody could join the fun." More than 100 artists worked on the short. Of its roughly 50 effects shots, more than half include hand-drawn elements. The backgrounds mix new digital paintings with traditional watercolors, including several painted on paper by longtime Disney and Pixar artist Tia Kratter. About a quarter of the backgrounds come from the original film itself, pulled from the Disney Animation Research Library.

Kuperschmidt wasn't the only original crew member who jumped at the chance. Effects artist Bob Bennett, who worked on the 2002 film, also offered his help. "Bob Bennett has been working in effects in the CGI pipeline, and then he approached us," said Veerasunthorn. "He said, 'I worked on the original film. Let me do whatever I can to help you guys. You want any style guide? You want any help?' And we were like, 'We would love for you to actually animate on this short.' And he was like, 'I got you. I'm ready.'"

The first Lilo & Stitch came out 25 years ago, and it was made at the now-closed Walt Disney Animation Studios Florida. Even so, both directors found that the people who made it were still close by. "To me, it's a chance to get to learn from them," Veerasunthorn said. "I've worked with them a long time, just never really carved out the specific time and place to really dive into how the original film was made." That included executive producer Byron Howard, who was the supervising animator of Cobra Bubbles on the original film. "So we're like, 'Byron, tell us more about that time.'"

The short is also dedicated to Daveigh Chase, the original voice of Lilo. "It was important," Pierce said. "Lilo is such an amazing character, and we were really channeling the energy of how she would read the lines. She's such a fun character, and so it really felt nice that we were able to do that for her. Definitely super sad, but we were very happy to be able to try to keep this character going."

Veerasunthorn and Pierce directed the short from two locations. Veerasunthorn is based in Burbank, while Pierce is the artistic director of Disney Animation's Vancouver studio. They say the distance never split the crew. "One team, right?" Veerasunthorn affirmed. "We don't see these guys as, like, there's a team up there and a team down here. It's a singular team that works together."

"We've gotten a lot of practice at Zooming," Pierce laughed. "The only thing is sometimes the room would be lonely. Sometimes I'd be in a room, and Fawn would be in a room with a bunch of people, and vice versa. But at the end of the day, we really sort of found a good rhythm with that."

The short's score comes from two composers. Haim Mazar previously scored Pierce's short Versa, and his credits range from Scary Movie to the Tokyo DisneySea nighttime spectacular Believe! Sea of Dreams. Grace Fisher, a Santa Barbara composer who founded the Grace Fisher Foundation, joined the project in an unusual way. During the presentation, she said she was touring the studio when her group was taken to what staff called the "secret floor" to watch a screening of a work in progress.

"At the end of the screening, they were like, 'Oh, how would you feel about working on this as a composer?'" Fisher recalled. "And I was like, 'Wait, are you being real right now?'"

The pair had to write in a musical world that Alan Silvestri defined with his score for the original film. "It was very important to us, and to Malcon and Fawn, that we honor the tradition of the Lilo & Stitch scores, and kind of have a sense of welcoming the viewer back to this world that we all love and these amazing characters that we're all fans of," Mazar said. "Our challenge was creating a new theme and new ideas within the confines of this existing sound that Alan had come up with. We approached it by combining a nine-piece Hawaiian ensemble with a full symphony orchestra to create that sound. Hopefully the sound itself pays tribute to the original, but it still comes across as something fresh and unique to this short."

"Even though it's a new theme, [we had] the same standards for the way that it makes you feel," Fisher added. "The same nostalgia, the same feelings that the original score did."

Scratch needed a sound of her own. "Scratch has this very unique voice of heavy metal," said Fisher. "We have the Hawaiian ensemble, the orchestra, but then also heavy metal and also electronic stuff. There's just so many different types of ensembles that came together to play the music. The theme starts out in the orchestra, but then it carries through all these different types of ensembles. So it was a challenge to try to keep it cohesive throughout everything, but it was also fun to find ways to bring that theme into different areas, different instruments."

"We really had kind of this puzzle of different ensembles that we had to put together, and different instruments that have different meaning in the score and who they relate to," Mazar explained. He said bamboo woodwinds carry the theme near the start and end of the short, with "cool blowing techniques into that flute that create these percussive rhythms" that give the score a tactile, up-close feel.

"For Scratch, we really wanted to capture her rebellious, wild spirit, and Malcon and Fawn had this idea early on of using metal music to represent her," he continued. "So there's some distortion guitars and these thrash metal drums and bass, and some electronics... Also, towards the end of the film, I don't want to give away too much, but there is a little bit of a nod to what we see in the beginning of the first film. Grace came up with this great little fanfare that represents that. So that was another nod to Alan's original score."

Mazar also conducted the 70-piece orchestra himself during the scoring sessions. Both composers say the mood behind the scenes matched the short's energy. It was definitely joyful, that’s a great word,” said Mazar. "It was such a big transition from Versa, and I was also scoring Scary Movie around the same time, which is a parody of horror movies, so I was doing a lot of quasi-horror music. This was such a great departure and a real treat. And then getting to work with Grace, we became such good close friends because of this."

"It was just so much fun," said Fisher. "Just being in the same room as Fawn and Malcon and Haim, everyone together is so funny and fun. Disney cultivates such a positive working environment, and I'm just so honored to be a part of that."

The filmmakers shared a few details to look out for in the theater:

• Scratch's voice: The editors first cut in realistic cat sounds, but the team kept coming back to the temporary meows Veerasunthorn recorded. She ended up voicing Scratch in the finished short. "I'm the project cat lady," she joked.
• A director cameo: The Nickelback-loving truck driver who gets hijacked by Scratch is drawn to look like Pierce, and it's his voice too. Because the driver is hand-drawn, the team could capture the likeness quickly without building a CG model.
• Musical quotes: Mazar said the score borrows a well-known Dies Irae "danger" motif heard in films like Home Alone and Star Wars to signal over-the-top peril right before a gag. Fisher said there's also a little music inspiration from Terminator 2.

Lilo & Scratch ends up being the perfect appetizer before Hexed, a pairing that feels like kismet. "For Lilo & Scratch, we prime the audience for physical, edgy, weird humor, and Stitch and Scratch have that plenty," Veerasunthorn said. "I worked on Lilo & Scratch before I went to Hexed, so I took a lot of inspiration… into Hexed. I'm like, 'Guys, Beef is primed to do some weird stuff in here.'"

The link is visual as well. Hexed opens with about a minute and a half of hand-drawn animation by Tyler Pacana, who also contributed hand-drawn animation to Lilo & Scratch. "We think it's a really great transition," Veerasunthorn said. "You see Lilo & Scratch, you are reminded of the nostalgic feeling, the fun of animation, and then you transition into the world of magic."

Lilo & Scratch opens in theaters on November 25th attached to Disney's Hexed.