 Animation for the film began in January 2006 , with the Itchy & Scratchy short being the first scene to be storyboarded . Groening rejected making either a live @-@ action or a CGI film , calling the film 's animation " deliberately imperfect " and " a tribute to the art of hand @-@ drawn animation " . The film was produced in a widescreen 2 @.@ 35 : 1 aspect ratio , to distinguish it from the look of the television series , and colored with the largest palette the animators had ever had available to them . A lot of the animation was produced using Wacom Cintiq tablets , which allowed images to be drawn directly onto a computer monitor to facilitate production . Animation production work was divided among four studios around the world : Film Roman in Burbank , California , Rough Draft Studios in Glendale , California , and AKOM and Rough Draft 's division in Seoul , South Korea . As with the television series , the storyboarding , characters , background layout , and animatic parts of production , were done in America . The overseas studios completed the inbetweening , digital ink and paint , and rendered the animation to tape before being shipped back to the United States . 
