The 6th A113Animation Awards Results

The results to the most prestigious and anticipated prizes of the Award season (ahem) are in! As always, keep in mind the winners have been decided by William, Munir and me (Damien) based on our personal tastes.
That being said, here are the winners of the 6th A113Animation Awards in bold and gold (go to the bottom of the post for a breakdown of the results).

Best Animated Feature Film:

• Finding Dory - Pixar Animation Studios
• Kubo and the Two Strings - Laika Entertainment
• Moana - Walt Disney Animation Studios
• Your Name - Makoto Shinkai
• Zootopia - Walt Disney Animation Studios

Our nominees for the Best Animated Feature Film

The People's Favourite Animated Film Award:

Zootopia

The 'Oh So Close' Award:

Zootopia

Staff Picks:

• William's Pick - Zootopia
• Munir's Pick - Zootopia

Best Director(s):

• Andrew Stanton, Angus MacLane - Finding Dory
• Travis Knight - Kubo and the Two Strings
• John Musker, Ron Clements - Moana
• Makoto Shinkai - Your Name
• Byron Howard, Rich Moore - Zootopia

Best Writing:

• Alexandre Astier - Asterix & Obelix: Mansion of the Gods
• Andrew Stanton, Victoria Strouse - Finding Dory
• Chris Butler, Marc Haimes - Kubo and the Two Strings
• Makoto Shinkai - Your Name
• Jared Bush, Phil Johnston - Zootopia

Best New Side Character(s):

• Becky - Finding Dory
• Little Hanzo - Kubo and the Two Strings
• Hei Hei - Moana
• Mini Maui - Moana
• Flash - Zootopia

Best Villain:

• The Moon King - Kubo and the Two Strings
• The Sisters - Kubo and the Two Strings
• Kai - Kung Fu Panda 3
• Chef - Trolls
• Main villain - Zootopia

Best Female Character:

• Monkey - Kubo and the Two Strings
• Moana - Moana
• Marnie - When Marnie Was There
• Mitsuha Miyamizu - Your Name
• Judy Hopps - Zootopia

Best Voice Acting:

• Roger Carel as Asterix - Asterix and Obelix: Mansion of the Gods
• Matthew McConaughey as Beetle - Kubo and the Two Strings
• Auli'i Cravalho as Moana - Moana
• Ginnifer Goodwin as Judy Hopps - Zootopia
• Jason Bateman as Nick Wilde - Zootopia

Best Song:

• "How Far I'll Go" - Moana
• "Where You Are" - Moana
• "Can't Stop the Feeling!" - Trolls
• "Get Back Up Again" - Trolls
• "Try Everything" - Zootopia

Best Score:

• Asterix and Obelix: Mansion of the Gods - Philippe Rombi
• Kubo and the Two Strings - Dario Marianelli
• Kung Fu Panda 3 - Hans Zimmer
• Moana - Mark Mancina
• Zootopia - Michael Giacchino

Best Animation and/or Graphics:

• Finding Dory
• Kubo and the Two Strings
• Moana
• Your Name
• Zootopia

Best Animated Short Film:

• Borrowed Time
• Inner Workings
• June: Life is Better When You Share the Ride
• Pearl
• Piper

The One to Watch Out For:

This is the film from this year that we're most excited for; what we think will be the film we're awarding most generously this time next year.

• Cars 3
• Coco
• Ferdinand
• The LEGO Batman Movie
• The Star

Live-Action Awards

Best Visual Effects in a Live-Action Feature Film:

• Captain America: Civil War
• Doctor Strange
• Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
• The BFG
• The Jungle Book

The Jungle Book (Best Visual Effects in a Live-Action Feature Film)

Best Live-Action Feature Film:

• 10 Cloverfield Lane
• Arrival
• Captain America: Civil War
• Doctor Strange
• Hunt for the Wilderpeople
• Star Trek: Beyond
• The BFG
• The Hateful Eight
• The Jungle Book
• The Nice Guys

Hunt for the Wilderpeople (Best Live-Action Feature Film)

And those were our winners for the 6th A113Animation Awards. Arguably, for the first time in the history of this distinguished competition, we don't have one, but rather two winners here: Kubo and the Two Strings won four awards, including the top one for Best Animated Feature Film, thanks to a beautiful/heartbreaking story, remarkable animation and gorgeous visuals; but Zootopia won eight, and pretty important ones too.

Notably, it took home The People's Favourite Animated Film Award with 35% of the votes. Moana (20%) and Finding Dory (13%) complete the podium decided by our readers. The 15% margin is not that big of a gap though: in the 4th A113Animation Awards, Frozen gathered over 60% of the votes and won by a margin of 40%. Last year's win was even more impressive: Inside Out destroyed the competition with a whopping 50% margin.
You can find the full results of this year's poll above.

In addition to the Best Animated Feature Film Award, Kubo wins Best Director for first-timer Travis Knight. The beautiful aesthetic choices he made and the seamless way of combining stop-motion and CGI to produce an epic action/adventure movie make him the clear winner for us. The fight sequences in the latest Laika outing, in particular, have blown us away.
Kubo also wins Best Villain - or Villains, in this case - for the Twins, the two most creepy and haunting characters we've seen this year; and Best Score for the rich and soaring music by Dario Marianelli.

Travis Knight on one of the Kubo and the Two Strings sets

Let's go back to Zootopia now. I think it's safe to say that The 'Oh So Close' Award never deserved its title more than it does this year; as one of the two films we gave a perfect rating in our reviews in 2016, Zootopia could just as easily have taken the top prize. It didn't, but as we were saying before, it still won important Awards, including Best Writing for its timely yet funny screenplay about discrimination, and both of our Staff Picks.

Here is what William has to say about choosing Zootopia:
"Well technically because I'm in the UK it's Zootropolis. But I refuse to call it that... It doesn't even make sense... Anyway:
Zootopia was the first animated film I watched in 2016, and at the end of the year it remained the best. As Damien has written time and time again on this blog, there was a lot of quality content last year; Moana had some of the best Disney music in years (and The Rock!) and Finding Dory was arguably even better than Finding Nemo. But it's Zootopia that I'll be coming back to watch time and time again in years to come. For it's truly creative story, it's clever plot, and its general good humour, it's not just the best animated film of the year, but, for my money, the best film."

And here are Munir's reasons for his pick:
"Last year saw the release of excellent animated features: WDAS released a new musical classic with Moana, Laika made us soar and tugged our heartstrings with Kubo and the Two Strings, Pixar delivered a worthy and heartfelt sequel with Finding Dory and DreamWorks Animation developed Po's story in a meaningful and funny way with Kung Fu Panda 3. On the international front, CoMix Wave Films delivered a nuanced, gorgeous and poignant story with Your Name. However, as fantastic as this output is, no film has been more necessary and timely than Zootopia. Capturing today's zeitgeist and showing us the ugliness of xenophobia while also being a mystery caper, Zootopia is a film that works on many levels providing thoughtful entertainment for audiences of all ages and demonstrates Walt Disney Animation Studios' commitment to tell the best stories in the beautiful medium that is animation."

Jared Bush (left) and Phil Johnston, recipients of the Best Writing Award for Zootopia

Judy Hopps also had quite the success, winning both Best Female Character and Best Voice Acting for Ginnifer Goodwin. Goodwin simply nailed the part and made us believe in this always-optimistic and determined cop bunny.
Flash gets the prize for Best New Side Character, because let's face it, we're still laughing thinking about his scene.

Moana takes the two last Awards given out to the animated feature films released last year (Best Song for How Far I'll Go and Best Animation and/or Graphics for its incredible visuals), while the powerful Borrowed Time receives the Award for Best Animated Short Film.

Lou Hamou-Lhadj (left) and Andrew Coats, winners of Best Animated Short Film with Borrowed Time

The LEGO Movie was completely under-estimated when it was released three years ago, and we're not making that mistake again. Plus, everything we've seen so far on the Batman spin-off is hilarious, so it is The One to Watch Out For.

The Jungle Book and its totally believable CGI sets and characters secures the Best Visual Effects, while the charming and ferociously entertaining Hunt for the Wilderpeople is our Best Live-Action Feature Film.

That's it for the 6th A113Animation Awards. Feel free to discuss the winners in the comments below, and tell us who your winners would have been.