Animation fans got an early holiday gift when the new documentary Pencils vs. Pixels premiered on VOD on Tuesday. Directed by Bay Dariz and Phil Earnest and produced by Tom Bancroft and Dariz, the beautifully crafted movie chronicles the Disney Renaissance of the late 1980s and early 1990s and how it was upended by the CG animation revolution that followed it.
Narrated by Ming-Na Wen, Pencils vs Pixels features insightful interviews with the likes of Pete Docter, Seth MacFarlane, John Musker, Glen Keane, Floyd Norman, Sergio Pablos, Bruce W. Smith, Jorge R. Gutierrez, Alex Hirsch, James Baxter, Sergio Pablos, Lorna Cook, Kevin Smith, Tony Bancroft, Tina Price, Leonard Maltin and Mindy Johnson. We recently had the pleasure of speaking with Dariz and Earnest about their informative and well-paced project. Here is what they shared with us:
Animation Magazine: Congrats on creating such a wonderful documentary about our favorite art form. Can you tell us how the idea for Pencils vs. Pixels come about?
Phil Earnest : We both have a lot of animator friends. I was working with [Disney animator] John Pomeroy on his biography, and he just had told these incredible stories that we just knew these insights about the recent history of animation had to be shared with the world. It wasn’t just about the process but also about the passion and the teamwork and the love behind it all. So, I called up Tom Bancroft, and he was in love with it, and he wanted to produce it.
This would be around 2017. We started with a small team. We called ourselves the “four core.” Once we got a point where we couldn’t move forward — COVID hit and we couldn’t get any more interviews — things were just at a standstill. We needed to establish an amazing team, and so that’s how we got connected with the awesome Bay, co-producer Jhemma [Ziegler] and everyone else. It was it was such an amazing experience.
Bay Dariz: We had a full team of about 10. I got involved in 2021. They’d made a lot of progress already. I saw some of the work they had done and realized this was exactly the kind of film I would want to see exactly the kind of film I would be thrilled to be a part of. I was in Canada shooting a sniper action movie, which was so high stress and crazy. Then, all of a sudden I had this warm feeling washing over me as I watched some of this footage. I knew this project was just what my soul needed. I’d always wanted to be animator when I was a kid, and this was just my era of animated films; it was on the cusp of 2D to 3D when I was a teenager. So overall, it has been a tremendously fulfilling two years working on this film.
Did you go in knowing what the basic theme of the movie was going to be or did that evolve as you began your research and interviews?
Phil: It was kind of a little bit of both. We kind of knew the story we were telling because the part of the it that was so impactful was the passion of the creative forces. But there was also the story of hundreds of people who got laid off because of the move to 3D. A lot of people’s lives were changed because of it, so we knew that was going to come up. We didn’t know how to do it in a tasteful way. We wanted to cover that subject with respect. We wanted people to know that not only was this a very difficult journey, but it was also one filled with passion. We had our basic structure down, and when we started to have more and more content, we were able to go to the next level. Bay was able to see all the material, and we were able to create a structure and find the people who needed to fit in those spaces.
Bay: One of the things I wanted to do too was to also bring in people like Mindy Johnson, who’s an animation encyclopedia and such a wonderful personality, and Leonard Maltin, who just knows everything about everything. It was important to have folks talk about subject from the historical point of view and also get some people like Kevin Smith as a pop culturalist. It was wonderful to see his perspective as someone who was coming up in the entertainment business at the same time and seeing how it was all changing for him.
As you began to dig into the subject, did you discover anything that really surprised you about the move from 2D to CG?
Bay: Something that was really surprising to me was what we discovered about the CAPS (Computer Animation Production System), the technology that Disney brought in to save money. It was basically the catalyst for what changed everything; without computer technology, hand-drawn animation wouldn’t have survived anyway. It just maybe accelerated it in a different way. So, it was this technology that was brought in to save costs that ended up tipping the scales. It was this really interesting to me, this sort of inevitable cycle of technology.
Phil: Back in the time when all of this happened, one perspective is that it was an incredibly horrible and sad situation, but sometimes things have to be broken before they can be built stronger. Even though it was a very unfortunate turn of events and nobody liked it, and it really affected the lives of the people who were working in animation, it was because of these advancements in technology that people now can work in hand-drawn animation on their iPad or iPhones, where everyone has access to animation. Today, we are able to see merging of the two world in movies like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. Just like a broken bone gets stronger, sometimes we have to go through hardships to get to where we need to be. It was very unfortunate then, but the technology has opened up new possibilities for new stories and storytellers.
You told me that you have enough interviews to probably do a 10-hour series. Were there any experts that you wish you could have included in your doc?
Phil: One person I wish we could have included was [Oscar-winning Disney producer] Don Hahn. He would have done it, but it never worked out with his schedule. Maybe we can get him for the next movie!
Bay: Speaking of Don Hahn, we actually did a Zoom call with him when we started the project. He gave us great guidance on how to do it and what the best approach was, and shared some of his secrets with us.
These days, everyone seems to be concerned about art create by AI. Some people compare this development to how CG took over hand-drawn animation. Do you see any parallels, or not at all?
Bay: I think AI is using something that actual artists have created and regurgitating it in a different way. While I think there might be some value to using AI for certain things, trying to make a movie with AI is like taking five songs and mashing them up and saying you created a new song. It’s all predicated on the work that came before it, and unless there’s a way to monetize that for the actual artist who created the underlying work, it shouldn’t be seen as real. I’ve also seen that the government is saying you can’t copyright a work created by AI. I see more problems emerging when AI work becomes indistinguishable from regular artwork. For me, it’s just a form of plagiarism
Phil: I completely agree with Phil. I believe in the personal touch and the heart behind the details of the an artistic project. Yes, humans are also inspired from artistic projects of the past. There’s nothing new under sun, but take those inspirations and turn them into a new type of storytelling opportunity. With art, you can experiment with new styles and new things. You need a designer. You need to have a brain behind it, You need humans that can think through things, not just a machine that just processing stuff and trying to make it different.
Ideally, what would you look audiences to take away from Pixels vs. Pencils?
Bay: I would hope that people would watch this movie and appreciate the artistry in animation in a new way. I would hope this also would go beyond the audience of people who are animation nerds and people who are love these films. Would love the general audience meet these very talented artists for the first time potentially and see what they’re like. So when they watch these films, they have have a whole new perspective on them. We’d also hope they would want to see more animation. As Andreas Deja says in the film, when something’s done at such a high level like these animated movies, it’s done for the ages. I hope that this film helps educate and inspire people to keep making these types of animated films forever.
Phil: I want people to be inspired and to have the drive to continue to do the things they love It’s really important for people to know that the journey isn’t always easy, but everybody’s in it together. Pople who get to do the things they love never give up. Everybody’s in the same process of working really hard. We want people to keep doing the things they love and create art that they love. Just get excited about the future because we think thinks are just going to get better in animation.
Find out more about Pencils vs. Pixels and find where to watch the movie on VOD at strikebackstudios.com/pencils-vs-pixels.
