Call them martial artists

It's unusual for an animated film to combine rambunctious physical comedy and the kind of painterly refinement that makes every frame suitable for display on a museum wall. But that's just what co-directors Mark Osborne and John Stevenson have achieved in "Kung Fu Panda." Although their backgrounds and sensibilities are quite different -- Osborne directed episodes of "SpongeBob SquarePants" and Weird Al Yankovic videos; Stevenson worked on "Shrek 2" and "Madagascar" -- as a team they have created a visually textured feature that pushes the boundaries of cartoon art.

The film's title may suggest a lampoon of martial arts movies, but the partners explained that their goal was to make an homage to Asian films that inspired them. After a frenetic opening sequence in the style of seizure-inducing anime, the film's look combines lyrical beauty with exuberant slapstick battles. The numerous fight sequences are choreographed as carefully as anything in a topflight martial arts film.

"We asked ourselves the question, what if Akira Kurosawa shot a Jerry Lewis film?" said Stevenson, a tall, ginger-haired Scot. "That made us feel that we could shoot a funny movie that would also be very beautiful and have great cinematography and composition, and reflective of principles in Asian art."

The film, following the adventures of a clumsy martial arts novice who succeeds and saves the day, is set in their own mythical version of China. "It's not set in any particular dynasty, but it is based very carefully and respectfully on Chinese art," Stevenson said. "It's not Asia World, it's very specifically China, just as it's very specifically kung fu and not tae kwon do or sumo or anything else. By making our choices as specific as we could, then hopefully you just accept that that's a real world and then you can forget about it and just follow the story of our main character."

An authentically Chinese cartoon "hadn't really been done before," said Osborne, a lanky, bespectacled New Jerseyite. " 'Mulan' was kind of the closest thing, and we saw a great opportunity to do something that hadn't been seen before but in a way was very familiar."

The process involved vocal performances by Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman and Angelina Jolie, a platoon of 35 animators laboring for more than four years and several million creative decisions, Osborne said. That's why so many CGI movies feature tandem directors.

"It's such a process that it's good to have someone to share the load with," Stevenson said.

"Usually there's an argument over just about everything, but it's all in the service of making the best film," Osborne added.

The animation process, which can require many weeks of work to produce two seconds of footage, is much more fluid than most people realize, Stevenson explained.

"The hardest thing for people to understand who don't know animation is that they assume there's a script that's all done. And then you just make that. It's not like that. It's a living document. The film is never done, it's always being reimagined, reworked" until the final moment.

The directors saw their own completed film for the first time when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, Osborne said.

They did set out more than four years ago with a well-defined vision of their goals, however.

"We defined this as a film that was not going to have contemporary jokes in it, was not going to be self-aware, was going to take itself seriously although it was a comedy," unlike other DreamWorks cartoons that trade in pop songs and celebrity references, Stevenson said. They strove for a unique look and sound for the film.

"We knew we didn't want any pop songs. We wanted an orchestral, timeless epic movie score. And we wanted to make it in Cinemascope, the same widescreen ratio as most of those great movies," he said.

It was hard to convince the studio to make the film in the same format as live-action epics. "It was outside the norm, and I think that's part of what made it thrilling and interesting for us," Osborne said. "We pushed the crew and the studio outside their comfort zone because we wanted to do something unique and break new ground. The future is in diversity. It's a great time for animation to spread its wings."