Disney+ picks up Malaga's latest animation gem: Toy Story look-alike at school

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Homework, a Naolito project, arrives on the entertainment giant's streaming platform after receiving 19 awards at international festivals

Paco Griñán

Málaga

Thursday, 15 January 2026, 15:56

The latest gem of Malaga's animation scene is called Homework - a 16-minute short film that feels like a true Disney production, which is why it is not surprising that Disney+ has picked it up for streaming.

Created by studio Naolito, Homework might remind viewers of one of the most beloved animated feature films - Toy Story. Instead of toys, though, the short film's main characters are a pencil, an eraser and other school supply tools that come to life when students go home and leave them unsupervised in the classroom.

The quality of the images and the endearing humour have conquered festivals all over the world. Homework has won 19 national and international awards. "It's a milestone to place an independent, locally based studio like Naolito on the world's animation stage," founder and soul of the production company Nacho Arjona says.

Based in Polo Digital in Malaga, Naolito mostly works in digital animation and viral campaigns. The leap to the big screen was made three years ago, with the help of crowdfunding. Although the idea was to produce Homework in six months, it took Arjona and his team two years to actually finish it. The ambition proved harder to achieve, but the film is already available in more than 130 million homes through Disney+. The film has proved to be so successful, that Disney has offered Naolito a four-year collaboration contract.

Indeed, the key to this small step for Disney but giant for the Malaga-based production company has been Homework which, without dialogue, narrates the confrontation between a pencil that leaves its mark when walking and an eraser that cannot stop itself from erasing everything it touches when it tries to play with the pencil. From this impossible relationship arises a charming story, also populated by an array of delightful secondary characters, such as the phosphorescent marker pen turned into a traffic sign, the multi-purpose sticky paper or the poster as a carrier of ingenious messages in the style of silent films - all inanimate objects that come to life with human characteristics.

Unexpected but well-deserved awards

"Homework has performed so well because, at the moment, animation is mostly for adults. Suddenly, we come along with a humorous story for the whole family and with a message and they tell us it's different because we make them laugh," Arjona says.

Arjona started the studio from scratch, initially online, by posting his drawings on Instagram. He now has more than a dozen animators, illustrators, 3D technicians, special effects experts, composers and sound designers on his team.

Arjona says that what gave them the kick towards Disney was the Malaga festival, where Homework gained insurmountable recognition. It was the new discovery in the Animazine category of 2024. "We presented it to the festival and already felt rewarded when they selected us. But then we won the audience award and the jury's best short film and we asked ourselves: where is the hidden camera?" he says.

Arjona and his team then saw how their endearing short film was selected in more than a hundred festivals, from the US to Taiwan, at the same time that it received 19 awards.

The agreement with Disney+ has allowed Homework to reach an audience never imagined by this independent studio from Malaga. Although they have not offered a lot of details, the Naolito team are currently finalising their new film project - A Day in the West, which will be released soon. Keep an eye out.