Q & A with 'Princess and the Frog' animators

The Disney animation team of Ron Clements and John Musker wrote and directed the 1989 blockbuster musical fairy tale "The Little Mermaid," and followed that up with 1992's "Aladdin" and 1997's "Hercules." Seven years after their last Disney film, 2002's "Treasure Planet," the two are back with the new musical fairy tale, "The Princess and the Frog," set in New Orleans in the 1920s and featuring the studio's first animated African American heroine. Randy Newman supplies the lovely ballads and swinging ragtime jazz score.

"The Princess and the Frog" also marks a return by Disney to traditional 2-D animation after focusing on 3-D computer animated films for the past five years. Though his Pixar hits ushered in the popularity of 3-D animated movies, it was John Lasseter, the chief executive of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios, and Ed Catmull, president of both studios, who rekindled the studio's 2-D flame.

The animation team recently spoke about the new film.

Q: What is the genesis of "The Princess and the Frog?"

Ron Clements: Disney has actually been interested in the "Frog Prince" all the way back to "Beauty and the Beast." They never got a version they were totally happy with. Weirdly enough, Pixar had been developing versions and they never got quite a version they were happy with. Their version actually started in Chicago and then moved to New Orleans partly because that is John Lasseter's favorite city in the world.

Even more recently, Disney bought the rights to a book called 'The Frog Princess' by an author called E.D. Baker and that was a twist on the fairy tale. In that book, when the princess kissed the frog she became a frog.

We looked at multiple Disney versions and the Pixar version. We took elements actually from everything and came up with our version, which is basically an American fairy tale set in New Orleans in the 1920s. John Musker: Before we wrote the script, John said, 'You have to go down to New Orleans and experience it first hand.' Neither one of us had been in New Orleans.

RC: We went down for a week and we toured everywhere. This was just eight months after Katrina. The devastation was unbelievable. But we also went through the French Quarter. We spent a day with a voodoo princess.