Dec 2, 2013

Full list of 2013 Annie Award Nominations

The Los Angeles branch of the International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood, has announced the nominations for its 41st annual Annie Awards. In the lead category of Best Animated Feature, seven animated features were nominated. Unlike some other years, there is no clear frontrunner in the feature competition which will make it fun to watch the various award races and see who emerges victorious at the Annies and Oscars.

The Annie nominations are generally evenly spread between the top contending films, and this year follows the same pattern. Monsters University and Frozen each scored 10 nominations, and The Croods and Despicable Me followed with nine apiece. Ernest and Celestine and Turbo each earned 6 nods.

Two of the five short nominees-Theodore Ushev's Gloria Victoria and Lauren MacMullan's Get a Horse! (as well as one “Animated Special Production” nominee-Max Lang and Jan Lachauer's Room on the Broom) are also among the shortlisted Oscar shorts. But the Animated Short Subject category of the Annies remains, as always, a headscratcher. Along with those films, they also nominated a tie-in short to Despicable Me 2 and a Moonbot short The Numberlys that was originally developed as an iPad app. The haphazard selection of nominees suggests they're not celebrating artistic or creative achievement; we can only guess about their selection criteria for these categories.

The Winsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement will be presented to Katsuhiro Otomo, Steven Spielberg and Phil Tippett. The celebrification of that award over the last decade has unfortunately distorted the meaning of lifetime achievement. Many of the well known names who receive it nowadays are still mid-career, or in the case of Spielberg, aren't even involved in the day-to-day production of animation. Meanwhile, animation legends who are truly deserving of the lifetime achievement honor are consistently ignored. It's hard to take any award seriously that honors Spielberg for his animation work, yet overlooks Don Lusk, who was an animator on nearly all the classic Disney features, worked in animation for 60 years, and just turned 100.

The Annie winners will be announced at the 41st Annual Annie Awards ceremony on Saturday, February 1, 2014 at Royce Hall on the UCLA campus. This year's ceremony host will be Tom Warburton.

A complete list of nominees is below:

PRODUCTION CATEGORIES

Best Animated Feature

Best Animated Special Production

Best Animated Short Subject

Best Animated TV/Broadcast Commercial

Best General Audience Animated TV/Broadcast Production For Preschool Children

Best Animated TV/Broadcast Production For Children's Audience

Best General Audience Animated TV/Broadcast Production

Best Animated Video Game

Best Student Film

INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT CATEGORIES

Animated Effects in an Animated Production

Animated Effects in a Live Action Production

Character Animation in an Animated Television/Broadcast Production

Character Animation in an Animated Feature Production

Character Animation in a Live Action Production

Character Design in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production

Character Design in an Animated Feature Production

Directing in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production

Directing in an Animated Feature Production

Music in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production

Music in an Animated Feature Production

Production Design in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production

Production Design in an Animated Feature Production

Storyboarding in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production

Storyboarding in an Animated Feature Production

Voice Acting in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production

Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production

Writing in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production

Writing in an Animated Feature Production

Editorial in an Animated TV/Broadcast Production

Editorial in an Animated Feature Production

JURIED AWARDS