UPDATED: Seasonal Updates

Christmastime is upon us again! With less than two weeks to go until the most magical day of the year, I wanted to take a minute to address some blog business. First of all, you'll now see - here on the blog, and on our Facebook, Twitter and Google+ pages - our Christmas logos, adding a little bit of festive spirit to our mascots.

Secondly, it's usually this time of year (the 19th, in fact) that we announce our A113Animation Awards, but this year, they're going to take place a little later. Our picks for the best animated films of 2012 will take place on 22nd February, 2013. This means the 3rd Annual A113Animation Awards will more or less coincide with the 85th Annual Academy Awards (they're a little more prestigious, I'll grant you), but the main point of this delay is to allow me the chance to see almost every mainstream animated film: Wreck-It Ralph doesn't open here until 8th February, and I never got the chance to see Frankenweenie in cinemas, so I'll be checking it out when it hits Blu-ray on 11th February. Madagascar 3 arrives on home video the same day, and I hope to check Ice Age 4 out over Christmas. It feels like it'll benefit our awards, if I have a better sense of the whole field.

UPDATE - 17/01/2013, 19:10 (GMT): Frankenweenie's UK home video release has been moved back to 25th February, so it will, alas, not be considered for the 3rd Annual A113Animation Awards, which will now take place on 15th February.

I'll definitely be wishing you a Merry Christmas nearer the time, but, with all this horrid stuff in Newtown, it's worth remembering that, yes, the world is a dark, scary place sometimes, but it's only as dark and scary as the people who inhabit it. As fans of animated films, we tend to be optimists, to search for the happy, the magical, in life; it's up to us to counteract the actions of horrendous psychopaths, with ones of compassion. I'll leave you with an apt, seasonal, quote from Miracle on 34th Street:

"I'm not just a whimsical figure who wears a charming suit and affects a jolly demeanor. You know, I'm a symbol. I'm a symbol of the human ability to be able to suppress the selfish and hateful tendencies that rule the major part of our lives."

A113Animation wishes its most heartfelt condolences to all affected by this tragic event.