Are sketches old fashioned?

Interesting to note the commentary on Huffington Post on the Pixar development process (link) but to my mind, hard to believe that people would think that sketches are old fashioned...

"After what we see in the final production, it's hard to believe that in the digital world we live in, Pixar still begins with a simple sketch."

The image sequence of iterations for Monsters University on imgur (link)