Ed Catmull – the eventual founder of Pixar – was also one of the first to use computers for 3D animation. His first creation A Computer Animated Hand played an instrumental role in showing us a computer’s ability in creating great animation. And today we’re wondering how we can use AI programs to make painstaking, laborious animation a thing of the past.

What follows are many AI projects working on automating animation. They’re not flashy. They’re not complete. But one of these might be the next breakthrough, as Ed Catmull once brought us.