Pencils vs Pixels

Pencils vs Pixels (2023) is a documentary you can watch online on iFILM about the rise, fall and quiet comeback of hand-drawn animation. The people who actually held the pencils sit down to tell the story themselves.

Glen Keane, John Musker, Floyd Norman and other artists walk through Disney's second golden age at the turn of the 1990s — The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, The Lion King — when 2D animation reached heights nobody expected. Then Toy Story arrived and the whole business pivoted to computer graphics almost overnight. Across a tight 72 minutes the film gathers animators, producers and voices like Pete Docter, Seth MacFarlane and Kevin Smith to ask what got lost in that shift and what survived it.

Directed by Phil Earnest and Bay Dariz, it leans on craft rather than nostalgia: how a pose is built, why a hand-drawn line feels alive, what separates a pencil from a cursor. A solid pick for anyone who loves animation and wants a look behind the glass. Stream Pencils vs Pixels (2023) online on iFILM.