Creative profile

Chris Sanders, Dean DeBlois and Stitch

A genetic experiment designed for destruction that instead learned what family means. The story of a little monster that waited seventeen years in a drawer.

Walt Disney Feature Animation · USA / Hawaii · since 2002

Seventeen years in a drawer

In 1985 the young animator Chris Sanders was drawing a strange, unruly creature for an unpublished children’s book. The project fell through — the character was too subtle to fit its story into thirty-two pages. Sanders tucked the sketches into a drawer, and for seventeen years no one knew about them.

In 1996 the head of Disney animation asked him whether he’d like to pitch something. Sanders pulled out the old drawings. Over a sushi dinner at Disney World he told the story of a lonely little monster from the forest who didn’t know where he came from. The producer said: “move him into the human world.” That’s how Lilo & Stitch and Experiment 626 were born.

Chris Sanders — and his voice

Animator, director, screenwriter — and the voice of Stitch in almost every production. Sanders gave the character a voice he had “just used to tease people at the studio, calling them up on the phone.” Disney’s one condition for greenlighting the film was this: “it has to look like you drew it” — not like traditional Disney, but like Sanders’s private, soft style. Earlier he had worked on Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Mulan.

Hawaii and Ohana

When the producer suggested moving the story to the human world, Sanders looked at a map on the wall and saw Hawaii, where he had recently been on holiday. From a road map he took the names: “Lilo Lane” and “Nani.”

“Ohana means family” — that’s the heart of the whole film. Stitch, genetically designed for destruction, discovers that “family means nobody gets left behind.” The film was made on a small budget, with watercolour backgrounds that Disney hadn’t used since Dumbo (1941).

An Asian phenomenon

Stitch has one of the largest fan bases of any Disney character in Japan, Korea and China — there his popularity far exceeds the Western one. In Japan an anime spin-off, “Stitch!”, was made. In Hong Kong and Taiwan he’s an absolute collector’s must-have. The Asian “ugly-cute” aesthetic embraced him as its own: a little monster who can be strange and beloved at the same time.

Live-action 2025

In May 2025 the live-action remake of Lilo & Stitch hit screens and earned over a billion dollars at the global box office. Chris Sanders once again voiced Stitch, recording five sessions of four hours each. The direction was entrusted to Dean DeBlois. The collector’s editions released for the premiere sold out immediately in most countries.

The world of Experiment 626