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Disney has  released a veritable barrage of images from Tim Burton's upcoming Alice in Wonderland, giving us our best look yet at the creatures of the film - the March Hare, the Cheshire Cat - as well as a glimpse of Johnny Depp's Mad Hatter in action. And also in a kilt.

The strange but also encouraging thing about these stills is that, Johnny Depp and the occasional pair of stripey tights aside, these look as much Lewis Carroll as Tim Burton, the director clearly paying more than lip service to the source material.

And these glimpses into the digital creation of the film give us a sort of behind-the-scenes look at the progress of the Cheshire Cat.

1. The iconic shot of Alice’s first meeting with the Cheshire Cat, who’s grinning at her from his tree limb, begins with what’s similar to a storyboard sketch, using an assemblage of low-resolution character stills.

2. The scene moves to animation, where the character is dropped into a low-resolution environment—the images are kept low-res to allow Imageworks’ animators to create the Cat’s performance without having a lot of data to manipulate.

3. The biggest challenge is to create a realistic cat that can generate the trademark exaggerated grin. Here, the all-important hair has been added, ensuring it behaves as it should, where it should be, with the Cat now curled on his limb.

4. Here, final lighting is added, along with a full-resolution environment behind the Cat, including the flora and atmosphere added for visual effect.

New character and Underland concept art

New Alice In Wonderland film stills

Alice in Wonderland is out on March 5 in the UK, so we'll have to wait until then to explore further down this particular rabbit hole.