Animaj Brings ‘Ozzy Fox’ Series to Disney Plus as It Charts a Path for AI in Animation
Animators using agentic AI? It’s already happening, and this is what it looks like.
Since meeting the Animaj team at Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California in 2025, much has changed. The AI-boosted animation studio has now produced its first combined project, "Ozzy Fox," debuting on YouTube and Disney Junior in July and launching on Disney Plus soon. The preschool-aged show features vibrant colors, catchy songs and a lovable family of foxes. While the characters are drawn by humans, AI assists to expedite the process.
AI has become a normalized part of the creative process, appearing in various fields from music to movies. Studios now openly admit to using AI to create content faster while retaining human involvement. Animaj has released a tool called FlipMove, a pipeline combining all the AI models developed over the years into a single tool for animators.
The studio has also created an agentic AI workflow, where agents with access to AI tools and context about the show guide the work of animators, directors, and others involved in the project.
The goal of this AI integration is to reduce the time from the director's initial storyline notes to the final cut. According to Animaj CEO and co-founder Sixte de Vauplane, this artistic-centric use of AI could be the industry's answer to its current needs. Animaj animators maintain full control at every frame, with their closed, in-house LLMs having access to context about the show, drawing style, characters, and storylines. This ensures the AI suggestions are customized and fit the team's vision.
De Vauplane emphasized that Animaj's technology doesn't replace animators; instead, it makes their jobs less tedious. An animator sketches out each character's main poses, and AI fills in the in-between movements from each pose. The animator then tweaks these poses before finalizing them. A demo video of the FlipMove pipeline showcases how a human-drawn sketch can quickly transform into a 3D animation with AI tools importing the Ozzy Fox house and characters onto the screen and posing them to match the sketch.
David Min, vice president of Disney Innovation, clarified that the writers and animators involved in "Ozzy Fox" still have their jobs; they're simply creating content much more quickly. Animaj also published an AI manifesto online, condemning "AI slop" — low-quality content produced by simple prompts using online AI tools. Collaborative AI tools should be in the hands of storytellers, argues Animaj, as rejecting AI leaves more room for those producing slop.
Written by urgent.news from CNET's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
