Lorenzo is a departure for Disney in terms of the visual style and tone of the story. All images © Disney.

Lorenzo, which premiered this month at the Florida Film Festival and is bound for Annecy 2004 in June, is quite a departure for Walt Disney Pictures, even for a short. It’s zany and dark and playfully sadistic. At first glance, it has the anarchic spirit of a Looney Tune. And yet Lorenzo is more artistically ambitious. The five-minute short possesses a look that’s strikingly original: “a moving painting” that digitally captures the loose, dry, rough, texture of a brushstroke. Its premise is very inventive too. Lorenzo is about a snooty and spoiled cat in a sleepy South American town that receives his comeuppance when his tail becomes hexed and takes on an uncontrollable personality of its own. Vexed into frenzy, Lorenzo tries everything to kill his tail in a madcap pas de deux, highlighted by their doing the tango known as milango.

Needless to say, it’s a hoot. Then again, if you think back to the wild and crazy Silly Symphonies or the early mischief of Mickey Mouse, Lorenzo isn’t such a stretch for Disney. Walt would’ve loved Lorenzo for its clever gags and groundbreaking hybrid approach. And he would’ve been proud of nephew Roy Disney running with Joe Grant’s inspired premise and giving it over completely to Mike Gabriel. Grant, who will be 96 in May, and is best known as the designer of the Witch/Queen for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as well as his work on Dumbo and Alice in Wonderland, still has a witty and agile mind. And Gabriel, the character designer who previously directed The Rescuers Down Under and Pocahontas, reveals the breadth of his talent with this tour-de-force. He wrote, directed, designed, storyboarded and background-painted Lorenzo.

One door closes, another opens: Mike Gabriel left one Disney project under a cloud and found inspiration and freedom in the tango and a blue cat.

Originally intended as part of a follow-up musical anthology to Fantasia 2000, Lorenzo was exec produced by Roy Disney (the force behind last year’s Destino) and Don Hahn (The Lion King), who came up with the idea of setting it to the tango. As with Destino, producer Baker Bloodworth closely guiding the creative and technical teams at Disney’s Paris and Burbank animation studios. Lorenzo was animated in Paris, with digital and post-production work completed in Burbank. Dave Bossert, an associate producer on Destino and a key collaborator in developing Disney’s animated shorts, served as artistic coordinator and visual effects supervisor. He worked with digital supervisor John Murrah and CG supervisor Dan Teece, who created a software program called “Sable” that was integral to the distinctive visual style of Lorenzo.

Gabriel was offered Lorenzo in early 2001. He had just been dismissed from Sweating Bullets over “creative differences,” which then became Home on the Range. However, rather than just sitting out the remainder of his contract at Disney, Gabriel was given the opportunity to work on a short for the first time in his career.

After accepting Hahn’s offer (it was either Lorenzo or a Tahitian short), Gabriel bolted for Virgin Megastore, where he spent $346 of his own money buying 40 tango CDs. As luck — or fate — would have it, the first track on the very first CD that he popped into the player in his office immediately hooked him. It was the tantalizing Bordoneo y 900, performed by the internationally renowned Juan Jose Mosalini and his Big Tango Orchestra.

Gabriel looked at Grant’s designs for inspiration: a huge, fluffy cat drawn in blobbish blue pastels, with a droopy mouth and large tail. You can’t even see its feet. But since Gabriel can’t draw with chalk, he took his wide, flat brush and painted his own blobs of blue cat with no outline of any kind.”