Well, The Ballad of Nessie isn't really a lost Disney short: it's made to seem like something newly discovered, evoking the classic look and feel of Mary Blair and Bill Peet, among others. The five-minute short appropriately opens Friday with Disney's latest hand-drawn feature, Winnie the Pooh.

Nessie is a gentle story told in rhyme (narrated by Billy Connolly) and set in the bonny blue highlands of Scotland, in which the friendly Loch Ness monster and her best friend, a rubber duck named MacQuack, are made homeless when a land developer, MacFroogle, constructs a golf empire atop Nessie's peaceful home.

The hand-drawn short is the creation of Stevie Wermers, who previously worked on the Goofy short, How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, with Kevin Deters. In fact, Wermers pitched Nessie on the same day that Deters pitched Goofy in 2006. It's an outgrowth of her student short at CalArts from the early '90s. After she assisted Deters as co-director on Goofy, he reciprocated on Nessie to help her realize her dream. In between, they co-directed the CG-animated ABC special, Prep & Landing, in 2009.

"For me, doing the initial pitch to a bunch of directors here at Disney Animation was the most difficult moment," she confesses. "The stakes were high because I'd been waiting 15 years to get this opportunity. I was already a little nervous. And the day that we were supposed to pitch, we found out that John Lasseter was going to sit in on the meeting. And it was only three or four months after Disney acquired Pixar. So he hadn't been in the building that much. I had never met him before but it worked out."

Indeed, Lasseter appreciated the homage to classic Disney, according to Deters. "He definitely got what we were going for with this and the Goofy short," he adds. "We wanted to reconnect with the history of the studio, but not be slavish to it. And find a venue for a modern audience. And I think the message comes through, which John liked, that it's OK to express emotion in a society where people are often afraid."

We wanted it to feel like a lost Disney short in terms of art direction and production values and character design," Deters suggests. "We very deliberately wanted it to look like something made back in the day. Mary Blair was a key influence along with The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Johnny Appleseed. Art director Andy Harkness' colors are rich and vibrant; and Lorelay Bove, the vis dev artist, is a rising talent."

But it was a start and stop process all the way through, given the top priority of The Princess and the Frog. And yet the dream team's participation only enhanced the beauty, grace, and pathos of Nessie. Serving as supervising animators were Ruben Aquino, Dale Baer, Andreas Deja, Randy Haycock and Mark Henn, who ended up animating about half the short.