Animators Reject AI Shortcuts at Variety's 'Pixels and Pencils'

By Elena Vasquez

Six leading animators told an audience in Savannah, Georgia on Monday that artificial intelligence cannot replace human creativity in filmmaking. The panel, Variety's "Pixels and Pencils," ran in partnership with the SCAD Savannah Film Festival and was moderated by Variety's Clayton Davis.

The panelists spanned five studios and projects. They included Brad Bird (Netflix's "Ray Gunn"), Daniel Chong (Pixar's "Hoppers"), Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado (DreamWorks Animation's "Forgotten Island"), Travis Knight (Laika's "Wildwood") and Leah Nelson (Independent Film Company's "Tangles").

Meg Weichman, artistic manager of SCAD's Theatres and Festivals, introduced the session as a celebration of the "imagination, artistry and collaboration that brings extraordinary animated stories to life."

Why does animation take so long?

Chong, directing Pixar's "Hoppers," described the craft's demands in concrete terms. "Every set, every character, every piece of cloth, every piece of hair, every moment of atmosphere, all of that is created and made from ground zero," he told the audience. "There's no camera you can point at."

Animated films typically take well over a year to complete. Bird's "Ray Gunn" took roughly 30 years from first idea to big-screen release, though he worked on it intermittently over that period.

Bird said the effort is inseparable from quality. A good story "has to come from life," he said. "You can't create the illusion of life without having one, and that's what we are in charge of — making the illusion of life and bringing people to something new."

What does stop-motion demand?

Knight's "Wildwood" used stop-motion animation, a process he called a "pain." The film required 2,800 shots.

"Stop motion is progressive. You start on frame one and you work your way all the way through in slow motion until you have a performance," Knight said. "There is something extraordinarily magical about being a part of that."

Chong directly addressed AI-era shortcuts. "When you see people taunting that, 'Oh, I can make this with the click of a button,' or, 'I can do this with these shortcuts,' I think we just have to have faith that these processes are the way they are, and they're as hard as they are to make for a reason, because that's what makes these movies great and that's what makes them resonate with humans," he said.

How does style serve story?

The panelists argued that animation technique should follow narrative, not the reverse. Mercado said the choice among 2D, 3D, stop motion or Claymation depends on the film's story.

"It really is the story that dictates the visual storytelling and drive of the characters," Mercado said. "That's how we were able to play with various styles of anime and manga that followed the character point of view in these sections of ['Forgotten Island']."

Crawford explained the reasoning behind that film's shifting styles. "For 'Forgotten Island,' we're like, 'This is an exploration of memories and how we experience them' and thinking we all reflect memories in different ways," he said. "To have the animation style switch up depending on who the teller of the memory is was just a really exciting opportunity."

Do animation directors need to animate?

Nelson, director of "Tangles," challenged the assumption that animation directors must be animators themselves. "What I had to do, because I'm not an animator, was do everything else to communicate the vision — anything I could think of to communicate to my team what I hoped for and what I wanted to fight for," she said. "I used all the other tools I could think of. I did a lot of acting references. I filmed myself doing the actions if I couldn't draw it."

The panelists agreed that the humanity behind animated films makes stories resonate with audiences in ways AI cannot replicate. Still, the industry's future remains uncertain as technology advances and animators adapt. Bird advised artists in the audience to keep learning the ins and outs of animation as the field evolves — a counsel that positions craft mastery, not resistance alone, as the filmmakers' answer to an unsettled decade ahead.