“What’s really unique about the movie is the cast of characters – that’s the thing that I’m the most excited about,” says director Steve Anderson, who has been on the project since late 2002. “They’re very human, they have vulnerabilities, they have hopes and dreams that I think you really care about and you latch onto these characters for those things. Even the villain is very human, and I’m really looking forward to seeing how people respond to these characters, and I hope they fall in love with them as much as I have.”

The plot revolves around Lewis, an orphan boy genius and inventor who decides to uncover the identity of his parents. He is taken to a streamlined, utopian future by the time-traveling Wilbur Robinson to uncover his past and outsmart the sinister Bowler Hat Guy, all the while encountering numerous memorable friends along the way. To create this fantasy, it took Disney’s Burbank studio more than four years and about 200 artisans, including art director Robh Ruppel (Mulan, Treasure Planet), to see this project out to its completion.

“We started out with inspirational boards and did a ton of research, and because I was actually trained as an industrial designer, I know a lot of stuff first hand,” says Ruppel, who led the teams to design everything in the film from the wardrobes to the lighting to the dazzling futuristic city. “We looked at industrial designers who defined the look of streamlined moderne, like from the World’s Fair of ’39. It was more aeronautical than art deco, back when people were visualizing a grand future with amazing technology and flying cars. We just made that into a reality.” Ruppel was inspired by artists like Raymond Loewy, Henry Deifus and Harold Van Doren, as well as cinematographers Vittorio Storaro and Caleb Dechanel, not to mention the artistic collaboration from author/illustrator William Joyce himself.

“I made compilation sheets of reference that included images of eye-popping Technicolor, old popular mechanics magazines, old movies,” says Joyce, who worked closely on the production as executive producer. Besides writing and illustrating a half-dozen children’s books, Joyce created Playhouse Disney’s Rolie Polie Olie, PBS’s George Shrinks and had been a character designer at Pixar before Meet the Robinsons started production. He also produced and designed characters for Fox’s film Robots. Throughout the process, Joyce would submit drawings, art samples and story ideas from his home in Louisiana to the staff in Burbank. “Early on, there were story points in the movie that appeared too purposefully to be straight out of the book,” he says. “And I said, ‘The book’s a lark; the movie should be a lark. I appreciate that you want to stay so perfectly true to things, but don’t let it weigh things down and get in the way. Just stay true to the spirit of it.’ And they did.”

The story process for the film was unconventional for Anderson, who had started at Disney in 1995 with Tarzan and worked as head of story for Brother Bear and Emperor’s New Groove. “When I was handed the script in ’02,” says Anderson, “our head of development said that they wanted to try a different experiment with this movie. We assembled a story crew and an editorial crew and built reels for this movie, boarding the entire movie all the way through from A to Z. Then we were going to screen the reels internally and decide whether or not we’re going to make the movie. Amazingly enough, this was very unheard of at the studio.”

The habit that the studio had fallen into was a process that took more time, money and energy. Boarding acts one, two and three of a film at three separate time periods would often lead to going back and attempting to fix story bits that were already green-lit, which led to holding up production, creating new story problems, and inevitably damaging morale. “None of that was the case with this movie,” says Anderson. “We got to stake our flag in the ground and say, This is our movie, if you want to make, let’s make it.’” The screening of the finished boards in November ’03 was met with overwhelming praise. “That was probably the highlight of my career,” adds Anderson. “The response we got to the movie and the characters was so inspiring. That initial screening made us feel that we really had a story that’s worth making.”

It was decided that the project was going to be CG-animated before Anderson or Ruppel were brought onto the project. “There was no motion capture at all, which I think made everything look much more alive,” asserts Ruppel. “Even though some of the characters’ movements are broad and sometimes very quick, it’s much more believable, I think, than a motion-capture performance.” Proprietary animation tools within Maya were used to create the character animation, and a proprietary piece of software called Paint 3D was used for texture-painting. All of the 2-D digital painting was done in Photoshop. Adds Anderson, “I think when you’re watching it you forget you’re watching a computer-animated movie. I’m amazed at the amount of warmth, heart and character that you could get in 3D.”

“It’s so sweet and gigantic and joyful like those old motion pictures were, but without being treacly,” Joyce promises. “It just puts you in a good mood. You feel like you’ve had a grand ol’ time at the movies.”