Dana Terrace

Dana Terrace (born 1990) is an American animator, writer, and director best known for creating Disney Channel’s The Owl House, which won a Peabody Award in 2021, and for storyboarding Gravity Falls and directing episodes of the DuckTales reboot. She built a reputation as a fiercely independent creative voice, pushing for LGBTQ+ representation even against studio resistance. In 2025 she became one of animation’s most vocal opponents of generative AI, calling on fans to cancel Disney+ and pirate her own series in protest of the studio’s adoption of AI-generated content.

Unsubscribe, pirate, pick up a pencil

The breaking point came in November 2025, when Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors that Disney+ would let subscribers create and share AI-generated short-form content on the platform. Terrace’s response on X was immediate and scorching: she mocked the pitch as paying Disney to “make your own content slop” that the company would then own, told fans to unsubscribe and pirate The Owl House instead, and followed up with the all-caps battle cry that became her signature: “PICK UP A PENCIL OR DIE.” Outlets from Deadline to Gizmodo covered the revolt, and her posts became a rallying point for the anti-AI backlash against Disney’s plans.

That reply — aimed at the argument that gen AI finally lets “regular people” create — is the heart of her position: regular people already make art every day, and what AI offers is not access but a shortcut that routes creativity through corporate infrastructure. Her stance aligns her with the labor fight waged by The Animation Guild, whose members struck the same year over AI protections in their contracts.