Disney is partnering with AI startup Animaj to dramatically accelerate its animation production process, reducing the time needed to create a five-minute episode from five months to less than five weeks.
Corinne Reichert reports for CNet that Disney selected Animaj as part of its 2025 accelerator program after reviewing thousands of AI companies. The technology allows animators to sketch key poses while AI fills in the movements between them, a process called “motion in-betweening.”
The partnership addresses a critical challenge for Disney in the streaming era: producing high-quality content quickly enough to meet audience demand. “It can be like a year before you can even get a pilot of something to test out. With Animaj, they can do it in 30 percent of the time,” says David Min, vice president of Disney Innovation.
Animaj trained its AI model on over 300,000 poses from the children’s series Pocoyo, ensuring the technology matches the show’s specific art style. Animators retain control by correcting AI-generated movements in real time using a stylus.
Disney emphasizes that the technology keeps artists central to the creative process. “What Animaj does well is that the artist is really driving the process,” Min explains. The company specifically avoided text prompt-based AI tools like Sora and Veo, which produce less consistent results.
