Harry Knowles of Ain’t It Cool News has posted a letter by Jim Hill that has several juicy news nuggets!

– Disney Imagineers are preparing a new attraction for the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World called “Stitch’s Great Escape”. The show needed a “a few minutes of new traditionally animated footage featuring characters from Lilo & Stitch… for the attraction’s pre-show as well as to supplement the action in the show’s main theater”. The Imagineers went to Disney’s Feature Animation department to see if they could produce the animation. “The folks at Disney Feature Animation were reportedly forced to say: Gee, I’m sorry. We’re going to have to take a pass on doing the animation for ‘Stitch’s Great Escape’. Not because they were too busy with some other project… But because the knuckleheads who are now in charge of Disney Feature Animation had fired all the people who actually knew how to do traditional animation”! The Imagineers were forced to go outside the company, to Renegade Animation to do the work!

– Legacy Animation, created by former Disney animators in Orlando, will be giving “Internet-based animation fans a front row seat for the creation of the studio’s first project: a new traditionally animated short subject… Once they’ve selected the characters & the core concept for the film, Legacy will then begin keeping a blog that covers the short’s entire production. So – for the first time (on the internet, anyway) – animation fans will be able to follow all of the phases of this labor-intensive process. See a short go from storyboards to rough animation to… Well, when [Legacy Animation Studios Directing Manager Eddie Pittman] takes the short out on the festival circuit and shows the world what Legacy Animation is really capable of doing”.

– “A bold new version of Stanley & Roy’s website – SaveDisney.Com – is scheduled to debut late today or early tomorrow.”