Maya and Flow Supported the Multistyle Animation of The Cat in the Hat

The production team behind Warner Bros. Pictures Animation’s adaptation of The Cat in the Hat discussed the production process in an extended episode of Autodesk’s Made to Make series, covered in an 80 Level article published on 6 November 2026. The film used Autodesk Maya, as well as Flow Production Tracking and Flow Capture. The experience shared by directors Erica Rivinoja and Alessandro Carloni and animator Marek Kochout focuses on how the production handled different visual styles and a large team within a single project.

Different visual languages in one film

The Cat in the Hat is an adaptation of Dr. Seuss’s 1957 book. According to the source, some characters in the book are described with limited detail, so the production team developed their personalities and stories for the film. The directors aimed to build their own cinematic interpretation from the book.

Carloni said the film does not follow a single visual style: it moves from a playful section evocative of the world of Seuss to a realistic world, and then to a more fleeting setting that reflects memory and nostalgia. This approach calls for different aesthetic expectations to be managed together in character animation and scene production.

How was Maya used for character animation?

Animator Marek Kochout said he used Maya as his primary tool when working with the characters. Carloni added that the software helped the production adapt to its different cinematic languages. These comments indicate that Maya served not merely as a general modeling tool, but as one of the production tools used to create character animation and visual storytelling.

DNEG served as the animation studio on the production. According to Rivinoja, the team was spread around the world, so they needed software to support production coordination. Alongside Maya, they used Flow Production Tracking and Flow Capture.

Coordinating more than 800 people

Carloni described keeping more than 800 people working across different time zones connected and maintaining communication as a significant challenge. According to the production team, Autodesk tools helped keep information in a shared location accessible to team members. The source does not explain the function of each tool separately, so it is not possible to attribute coordination to any one software product alone.

Rivinoja said another challenge was developing a visual style specifically for the film. The process described, then, involved not only choosing animation software but also communicating creative decisions to a large, distributed production team.

What this means for architecture and visualization teams

Film animation and architectural visualization are not the same field of production, but the needs highlighted here may be familiar to teams working on large projects. When a project combines multiple visual approaches, sharing design decisions within the team and keeping project information accessible become important. The article notes that Flow Production Tracking and Flow Capture were part of the coordination effort.

For architecture firms and archviz teams, the article does not prove that any particular software is suitable for projects of every scale. Rather, it offers an example of Maya being used for character animation and distributed teamwork creating a distinct coordination need. The source provides no information about hardware requirements, licensing costs or software compatibility, so current product and licensing terms should be checked separately before making decisions on these points.