"Lilo & Stitch" premiered in the summer of 2002. Chris Sanders was hired by Walt Disney Animation to developed a rough idea that he'd originally intended to turn into a children's book decades earlier, with the condition that the film maintain his signature visual style. Dean DeBlois was brought on to co-wrote and co-direct along with Sanders. The project was developed with a smaller budget, and given a fair amount of independence, largely kept on the periphery of the studio's other large scale projects and adaptations. The story tells the tale of two orphaned sisters in then-present-day Hawaii, Lilo and Nani, who discover and adopt a strange, hyper-kinetic alien creature, who is himself on the run from his maker and an intergalactic space force looking to contain him. The film performed well, cited for its fresh, hand-drawn look (with old-fashioned watercolor backgrounds), quirky humor, fun use of music and locale, and a genuine heart and unique bond between two sisters. Well received at the time, the film went on to develop a huge cult following on home video, and led to several sequels, TV spin-off's, and a recent live-action adaptation.
The musical take on the project was also unique. Following after Disney's acclaimed "Renaissance" period of films, largely centered around full-blown period/fantasy musicals scored by Alan Menken, by this point the studio was looking for ways to switch up that formula. In this film's case, it meant a three-pronged approach. First, would be the heavy use of needle-drop songs, to highlight the real-world environment of the story. In this case, the film would heavily feature the songs of Elvis Presley, as he is Lilo's favorite artist, as well as two new covers of his songs, performed by Wynonna Judd and A*Teens. Next, the soundtrack would feature two original songs, composed by Mark Keali'i Ho'omalu and the score's composer, Alan Silvestri. These two songs aren't sung by characters in-film, but are meant to capture the energy and sound of Hawaii. Finally, the film received Silvestri's original score, playing in his traditionally orchestral style. Though the score is fairly short, sandwiched in between the songs in a tight running-time, Silvestri still makes an impression and brings big moments of action and emotional release when needed, developing several themes and motifs along the way.
The original soundtrack album released by Walt Disney Records, was mostly centered on the songs--featuring the two original songs, the Elvis tracks and covers. It also included three edited Silvestri score cues, totaling about fifteen minutes overall. A promo was floated around which doubled the score's length, though the full score has never been officially released. Probably a minor work in Silvestri's catalogue, the short score still packs a punch and features many of his signature styles. I present a total of twenty-one new covers, meant to highlight colorful imagery of the film.
I won't describe every cover in detail. Most are taken from official marketing imagery, or art created for later home video releases, or related merchandise (like Covers 16 and 17, which were taken from a comic-book adaptation of the story). Others feature original concept art by Chris Sanders, or watercolor work by production designer Paul Felix. Most of these all required some levels of upscaling, paint-out's of text, overlay patches or edits to compress or stretch the image to fit the square design.
Cover 18 features a painting by Thomas Kincade Studios, who create these elaborate landscapes for Disney films. The trick here was to compress the sides of the image significantly, tightening the overall composition, but still keeping most of the featured elements. This required a fair amount of work, bringing in the left and right wings and them blending in as needed to make it all feel seamless, overall removing about a third of the original composition. I'm quite happy with how the edit turned out.
Finally, the last three covers feature various fan-created or commissioned pieces. Cover 19 features an illustration by Tom Whalen. Cover 20 features art by Natasha Pradith, which was a class project that was meant to mimic the style of Tom Whalen. And Cover 21 features digital art by Sanjay Vijayaverl.
Hope you enjoy the collection, and let me know your favorites!
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