WDW Daily News

Pixar Animation Studios was the big winner at the 43rd Annual Annie Awards, Saturday evening at UCLA’s Royce Hall. ‘Inside Out’ won Best Animated Feature along with 11 other categories, including Outstanding Music – Michael Giacchino; Outstanding Editing – Kevin Nolting; Outstanding Production Design – Ralph Eggleston; Outstanding Voice Acting – Phyllis Smith as ‘Sadness’; Outstanding Writing – Pete Docter, Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley; and Best Directing – Pete Docter. This year was the first for the new category Best Animated Feature, Independent with Filme de Papel’s ‘Boy and the World’ taking this top honor.

The Best Animated Special Production was awarded to ‘He Named Me Malala’ (Parkes-MacDonald/Little Door); Best Animated Short Subject ‘World of Tomorrow’ (Don Hertzfeldt); Best Animated TV/Broadcast Commercial ‘Man and Dog’ (Psyop); Best General Audience Animated TV/Broadcast Production for Preschool Children ‘Tumble Leaf’ – Mirror (Amazon Studios and Bix Pix Entertainment); Best Animated TV/Broadcast Production for Children ‘Wander Over Yonder’ – The Breakfast (Disney Television Animation); Best Animated TV/Broadcast Production for a General Audience ‘The Simpsons’ – Halloween of Horror (Gracie Films in Association with 20th Century Fox Television); Outstanding Achievement for Character Animation in a Live Action Production: ‘The Revenant’ – The Bear (Regency Enterprises, New Regency Pictures, Anonymous Content, M Productions, Appian Way, RatPac-Dune Entertainment; and Best Student Film ‘ed’ (Sheridan College – Taha Neyestani).

“The Annies are drawing more attention from both our industry and the general motion picture industry,” said ASIFA-Hollywood Executive Director, Frank Gladstone. “We wait all year for this event and it never disappoints! It was a fun evening looking back at our history and celebrating what we have accomplished over this past year.”

Presenting the coveted Annie trophies this year were actor, producer & director Edward James Olmos with actress Rita Moreno; actor & writer Tom Kenny (SpongeBob SquarePants) with actress Laraine Newman (Dawn Of The Croods); actors Alexander Garfin and Hadley Belle Miller (“Linus and Lucy” from The Peanuts Movie) & Snoopy via Video; actress Kristen Schaal (Bob’s Burgers), composerChristophe Beck; Phyllis Smith (voice of ‘Sadness’ from Inside Out) with Bing Bong (Richard Kind) via video; Anomalisa co-directors Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, John Musker and ASIFA-Hollywood President, Jerry Beckand Executive Director, Frank Gladstone.

This year’s Juried Award recipients included Winsor McCay lifetime achievement award – Joe Ranft (posthumously), Phil Romanand Isao Takahata. The Winsor McCay Award is one of the highest honors given to an individual in the animation industry in recognition for career contributions to the art of animation. Don Hahn was this year’s June Foray award recipient which honors an individual who has given significant and benevolent contributions to the art and industry of animation.

The Annie Awards™ honor overall excellence as well as individual achievement in a total of 36 categories from best feature, best feature – independent, production design, character animation, and effects animation to storyboarding, writing, music, editing and voice acting, and have often been a predictor of the annual Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The ceremony was live-streamed again this year at www.annieawards.org/watch-it-live where animation enthusiasts and those unable to attend the event, could watch the show. A complete list of winners can be viewed at www.annieawards.org and highlights of the ceremony will be uploaded to the Annies website in the next few weeks.

Pete Docter likes to make me cry. In fact, I’m pretty sure he’s made you cry too. As the writer-director of Pixar’s Up and Monsters, Inc. and a contributing writer on other Pixar films like WALL-E, Toy Story, and Toy Story 2, Docter has shown an amazing ability to inject life and feelings into computer generated images.

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