Animation is magic. It’s something that all those – we’ll generously say variable quality – live action remakes of animated classics can never have. They can be fun, fine, touching, but when a pencil sketch switches from one frame to another and a picture comes to life then it is the alchemy, as animator Aaron Blaise explains in new documentary Pencils Vs. Pixels, of height, width, depth, and time.
Directed by Bay Dariz and Phil Earnest and narrated by Ming-Na Wen (the voice of Mulan herself), Pencils Vs. Pixels debuted last month at the Annecy Animation Festival ahead of its release later this year. It assembles the most extraordinary collection of animation behind-the-frames footage since Waking Sleeping Beauty (namechecked with due reverence here by Leonard Maltin). That unauthorized history of the Disney renaissance was such a remarkable work that Disney finally bought the rights. The same may not happen here because the focus isn’t solely on Disney movies, even though it’s impossible to discuss the medium without looking at Walt and the House of Mouse. It’s his commitment to push the limits of animation, to regard it as an art form in its own right, to risk scorn and his fortune and the whole company on projects like Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, and on, and on.
However, it’s not simply a hagiography of Disney. Instead, it’s a potted history of the medium in America, and a chance to educate audiences on pivotal artists like the Nine Old Men and Mary Blair, and Roy. E. Disney (Walt’s nephew, whose “Save Disney” campaigns may have done exactly that).
This is an art form that its creators truly love. So to hear legends like Oscar-winner Glen Keane and Windsor McKay award-winner Mark Henn, and their heirs like Alex Hirsch (Gravity Falls) and Seth McFarlane (Family Guy, American Dad), Jorge R. Gutiérrez (The Book of Life) and Sergio Pablos (Klaus) talk with such wonder about how some moving lines become alive is itself moving. Also, full points for this being one of those rare films that brings in Kevin Smith as a talking head and there to be actual relevance to his appearance, both in talking about how The Simpsons informed his filmmaking and also allowed him to put pen to paper on his own cartoons, Clerks: The Animated Series and the Austin-made Masters of the Universe: Revelations.
It’s also, much like Waking Sleeping Beauty, undoubtedly about how Disney has dropped the ball on several occasions, such as leaving the space for Don Bluth to build his own rival studio with An American Tail and The Land Before Time in the 1980s, or not realizing that the failures of several projects in the late 1990s was due to bad scripts, not bad animation.
But the most important battle presented here is not between Disney and the rivals snapping at its heels, but between traditional cel animation and CG – 2D versus 3D. By bringing together an extraordinary roster of talking heads, Dariz and Earnest can get the oft-muddled history right, and even show the holy grail test footage for an unmade Where the Wild Things Are project by Keane and future Pixar studio head John Lasseter (not without irony, fired from Disney for pushing computer animation too hard). How that battle went is public record, since Disney closed its cel animation division in 2004. Pencils vs Pixels reveas that the true fight was not between 2D and 3D artists, but between artists and the executives who presented a fake either/or choice.
Yet while Paint Vs Pixels does step beyond the gate of the magic kingdom, it’s never quite out of Walt’s shadow. It’s also incredibly Americentric, barely even mentioning the rich history of animation in Europe and Asia, and animation historians may fume inwardly at the erasure of Max Fleischer and Ralph Bakshi. Indeed, much like the Academy that created an animated features Oscar just to keep cartoons away from “real movies,” Paint Vs Pixels often falls into the trap of believing that animation should be kid-friendly.
Yet it still provides an incredible viewpoint from the artist’s side of the wonder of American animation and its rich legacy. Most importantly, it sees a future in which, well, let’s just say that reports of the demise of 2D have been greatly exaggerated.
This article appears in July 14 • 2023.
