both the original film and The Land Before Time (1988), was set to direct and have Sullivan Bluth Studios provide the animation; owing to creative differences, however, they parted ways. As Bluth explained, "the business deal wasn't such that it helped our company". With no Bluth in sight for the sequel, Spielberg instead relied on ex-Disney animator Phil Nibbelink and ex-Richard Williams storyboard artist Simon Wells, the great-grandson of science-fiction author H. G. Wells, to direct the project. Nibbelink and Wells had both previously worked with Spielberg as supervising animators on Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Bluth stated in April 1992 that he regretted his decision, admitting that he disliked the final product of Fievel Goes West and "maybe we could've helped that film a little more". With John Cleese as the first choice for Cat R. Waul, he was approached in 1989 by one of the film's producers at what Cleese vaguely called "the Italian Oscars". He accepted the offer based on his enjoyment of the first American Tail and "I love sound studios anyway – there's none of the hassle and boredom and time wasting you get in television". Cleese was paid his lowest fee in ten years for the role, however, which made him very unwilling to publicize his involvement with Fievel Goes West. According to Cathy Cavadini, there was another woman initially planned to voice Tanya but left the project, so Cavadini replaced her. Spielberg met James Stewart at a party asking him to voice Wylie Burp, and all of Stewart's lines were recorded in ten days; his last involvement in a Western was in The Shootist (1976). Animation Don Bluth's departure from the project resulted in the animation of Fievel Goes West lacking the Disney-isms of the first film's animation. Instead, its animation is faster-paced and contains more elements of Warner Bros. cartoons. Spielberg instructed his animators to take on a "live-action" method to animating the film, where the characters are affected by parts of the environment such as lighting. Spielberg also directed for the camera to constantly move in sequences such as the sewer ride sequence and a 360-degree pan shot of the film's desert vista. These types of crane and dolly shots replicated certain shots in Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and were considered groundbreaking for the time. Apart from one computer-generated shot of the valley's ground, all of