Two animated guys shared a dream and director's chair

"We made it for us!" John Stevenson (right, with Mark Osborne) said of "Kung Fu Panda." (Francois mori/associated press)

Imagine Jerry Lewis and Akira Kurosawa making a movie together.

The result would probably have art-history references - definitely some slapstick. It might feature something like, say, a bumbling giant panda bouncing beach-ball style through an ancient Asian world, complete with sophisticated scenery inspired by shoji screens and kung fu epics.

According to John Stevenson, it was just such an imaginary collaboration between Lewis and Kurosawa that inspired "Kung Fu Panda," which Stevenson co-directed with Mark Osborne.

"We gave that [image] to our entire crew," Osborne said. "When we said that - people, like, began to immediately understand it.

"Yes, we can have a comedy, but it can look like an Asian painting," he said. "It can look like 'Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon,' but it can still be a comedy. That was the big thing that kind of helped everybody . . . believe in this strange idea."

Stevenson and Osborne are both first-time feature-film directors with arts backgrounds. Stevenson, a lanky Brit with thick gray hair who has no formal art training ("I used to draw looking at Warner Bros. cartoons," he said), started his career as a character designer on "The Muppet Show." Among his credits are being a story-board artist for "Shrek."

Osborne, also unusually tall, with a boyish brown mop and the Hollywood-creative uniform of screen-printed-T-under-jacket, has a degree in experimental animation from California Institute of the Arts, and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1999 for his stop-action animated film "More." He crossed over into the mainstream by directing episodes of the TV show "SpongeBob SquarePants."

How did they combine their disparate sensibilities to create a cohesive vision? "It's a mind meld," said Osborne. It was important for the crew to get one single vision of the film to ensure a sense of authenticity - "something we can believe in, personally," he said. Stevenson contributed his "Muppet Show" experience of bringing animated characters to life. "[The Muppets] were people, they were not cartoons. . . . They were sophisticated and nuanced, and it was totally amazing that I could get so emotionally involved with something that was made of fabric and socks," Stevenson said.

Both directors were compelled by the universal ability of creatures to transcend cultural barriers. "Watching puppets, or animation, or anything that is symbolic of a human being - it doesn't matter your cultural background. You can watch Kermit the Frog or Panda in Africa, England, or Europe, and you are not distanced because he is not of the same culture as you," Stevenson said. "You don't have any of the prejudices."

The duo insists they didn't tailor the film to fit the summer-kid demographic: "We made it for us!" Stevenson said. "We can't predict whether a 5-year-old or a 50-year-old is going to find it funny, or exciting, or dramatic."

What Osborne and Stevenson do want for kids - and adults - watching their film is to feel transported. Both fell in love with movies as a result of cinematic time travel; through "Star Wars" for Osborne, the Muppets for Stevenson. "One of the things I do think that kids love . . . is the chance to go to a different world," Stevenson said, "unique, special, self-contained worlds. They may be an abstraction of a world that you recognize, or something completely unrecognizable."

One of the perils of creating a self-contained world is making sure the viewer is never taken out of it with a visual inconsistency. "People don't really understand how much directing there is in an animated film. . . . The whole thing took four years," Osborne said. "We have to have meetings about every issue. What level is the water? What is the shape of the bottle? What is the carpet like? Do we show the dent in the carpet?"

"It's very Zen," Stevenson said.

Osborne countered, "It's almost like kung fu."