Enviromental Storytelling: Lilo and Stitch

I know I have already blogged about Lelo and Stitch, however I haven't touched on the backrounds of the movie.
In a deviation from several decades' worth of Disney features, Sanders and DeBlois chose to use water-colour painted backgrounds for Lilo & Stitch, as opposed to the traditional gouache technique. While water-colours had been used for the early Disney animated shorts, as well as the early Disney features Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Dumbo (1941), the technique had been largely abandoned by the mid-1940s in favor of less complicated media such as gouache. Sanders preferred that water-colours be used for Lilo to evoke both the bright look of a storybook and the art direction of Dumbo, requiring the background artists to be trained in working with the medium. The character designs were based around Sanders' personal drawing style, eschewing the traditional Disney house style. The film's extraterrestrial elements, such as the spaceships, were designed to resemble marine life, such as whales and crabs.