First, we could look at it as the directorial debut of Sergio Pablos, an animator who rose through Disney in the 1990s, ending up getting his first supervising animator credits on 1999's Tarzan and 2002's Treasure Planet , after which point it was bad business being a supervising animator at Disney as it shuttered and re-tooled its feature animation division.
Reminiscent of Tarzan and Treasure Planet (both of which Pablos worked on), the design work creates appealing and compelling characters.
Pablos came up during the final years of Walt Disney's traditional, hand-drawn animation department, working on such blockbusters as " Tarzan ," " The Hunchback of Notre Dame ," and "Hercules."
Pablos worked on Disney’s Treasure Planet and Tarzan, and that lineage is readily apparent in the bouncy, vibrant life that runs through all the character movements.
Pablos, who worked on Disney classics like “Tarzan” and “Hercules,” didn’t just return to hand-drawn animation; he used new software to add light and texture to his work, which is both evident and needed in the gray, foggy landscape of Smeerensberg.
Pablos -- who, along with writing the story for the two aforementioned films, had a hand in animating Disney classics like Tarzan, Hercules, Treasure Planet, and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame -- begins his latest work with a sentimental recollection of the lost art of letter-writing.