Feature Production Memo - July 2026

Art by Jenny Wu

The feature team is excited to announce that they’ve launched this epic space rom-com into its next phase! We’re thrilled to share some spectacular updates.

Casting
We’re thrilled to announce that our celestial story has found its stars! Alongside director Peri Segel and writer Allen Wu, we were excited to welcome our Casting Director, Topher Ngo, and Assistant Casting Director, Sekai Murashige, to the casting team, whose expertise helped guide us through every step of the search for our wonderful voice cast.

To help ensure that we focused purely on performance, we conducted a blind audition process. That meant that we listened to voice auditions without knowing who the actors were, allowing us to evaluate each performance based solely on how well it captured the heart, humor, and spirit of the character. 
The response to our casting call was incredible. We received nearly 50 auditions across all roles, and we were blown away by the talent, creativity, and range of performances that came our way! Narrowing down our selections was no small feat because we simply had too many talented actors to choose from for all roles.

After making our initial selections from the blind auditions, we invited actors back for callbacks, where we explored chemistry, character dynamics, and different interpretations of the roles. From there, we assembled the cast that would help bring our story to life.

To finish off the casting process, we gathered the entire cast and crew for our first Table Read. Hearing the script performed aloud for the first time by our full cast was an unforgettable experience. We couldn’t be happier with our cast and can’t wait to share more!

Art by Isa Kim

Pre-Design
Continuing from previous months, Art Director Jade Mahal Lew, Character Lead Isa Kim, and Background Lead Juris Tungpalan have expertly coordinated the art team to create over 80 art pieces. The world and story of Star Crossed have offered the design team opportunities to explore exciting questions, like how familiar technology might look in this sci-fi setting, or how characters might look across the years.

Art by Chloe Pineda

Storyboards
With more and more assets locked from pre-design, our story artists have officially blasted off into the world of our animatic! It’s been so wonderful to see our script come alive off the page, allowing us to explore how every scene, sequence, and emotional moment will play on screen. 

The process began with breaking down the script into individual sequences and identifying key story beats and character moments. From there, our artists translated our pages into hundreds of rough thumbnails, helping us map out everything from character performance to camera angles. In animation, locking the script is really just the beginning, because the story artists play a crucial role in shaping the story. The artists take what’s on the page and build upon it with visual storytelling, character performances, and visual gags, often uncovering exciting new moments that make the story even stronger! 

We’re excited to be approaching our Rough Pitch! This is the first time we’ll be able to experience our full story visually from beginning to end, and will really help us to make important decisions about pacing, storytelling, and character development as we move forward through production.

Art by Jenny Wu

​Production Team
Our team is growing! We’re excited to welcome many new members to our production team who have not only proven to be fast and eager learners, but continue to go above and beyond for the team in more ways than we could ever dream. Thank you to production for your endless support, hard work, and always bringing the calm to every storm!