3rd Annual A113Animation Award Nominations

They've been delayed thanks to Disney's release schedule, but the time is upon us again, and I'm here today to announced the nominees for the 3rd annual A113Animation Awards! This year, we're introducing a few new awards; check out the categories, a few comments about what sort of criteria each category has where necessary, and the nominees who've managed to make the cut this year below.

Note, I haven't seen every single animated film of the year - the most notable omission is Tim Burton's Frankenweenie - and the awards are to be judged on what I have seen, as of today.

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Best Animated Feature Film:

A113Animation's top honour, an award recognising the best all round animated film of the year. While we reward many different aspects of animation filmmaking with these awards, the Best Animated Feature Film award will go to the film that best ties all these elements together. Here are this year's nominees:

• Brave – Pixar Animation Studios
• ParaNorman – Laika Entertainment
• The Pirates! in An Adventure with Scientists – Aardman Animations
• Rise of the Guardians – DreamWorks Animation
• Wreck-It Ralph – Walt Disney Animation Studios

The People’s Favourite Animated Film Award: 
TBD - dependent on result of the poll on the right

Second Opinion Award:

TBA - Being decided by our A113Animation competition winner, Benjamin Bookelaar.

The ‘Oh So Close’ Award:
TBA - The runner up, whichever film A113Animation deems to be the second best animated film of the year.

Breakout Film:
TBA - An award honouring a film which particularly achieves something for its studio, whether it's making an impact for a new animation studio (2010 winner: Despicable Me) or helping re-establish one (2011 winner: Tangled) or otherwise proving a studio's merit.

This year, after welcoming our two new writers Damien and Munir, we're happy to give them each their own choice, picking what they deem to be the best animated film of 2012.

Damien’s Choice:
TBA

Munir's Choice:
TBA

Best Director:

This award goes to the director (or directors) who had the most personal contribution to their film, whether this be from a story standpoint, or whether it be in terms of their particularly outstanding guidance of the production of a film, this award goes to the director(s) whose presence you can most feel in the final film, without whom the film wouldn't have been. The 2012 nominees are:

• Chris Butler and Sam Fell – ParaNorman
• Genndy Tartakovsky – Hotel Transylvania
• Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman – Brave 
• Peter Lord – The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists
• Rich Moore - Wreck-It Ralph

Best New Side Character(s):

This award is one for newly introduced side characters that were particularly memorable in their outings, whether this manifests itself through comic relief or otherwise. The nominees are:

• Fix-It Felix, Jr. – Wreck-It Ralph
• The Forest Animals – The Lorax
• Mr. Bobo – The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists
• Sandy – Rise of the Guardians
• The Triplets – Brave

Best Voice Acting:

• Alan Tudyk as King Candy – Wreck-It Ralph
• Hugh Grant as The Pirate Captain – The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists
• Jude Law as Pitch – Rise of the Guardians
• Sarah Silverman as Vanellope von Schweetz – Wreck-It Ralph
• Tucker Albrizzi as Neil Downe - ParaNorman

Best Villain:

As 2012 proved, and as these five nominees most crucially proved, a villain does not need to be a simple thing, they can be menacing, they can be terrifying, they can be cunning, they can be scared and alone, and they can even be a former Queen of England. This year's diverse group of nominees is:

• Aggie - ParaNorman
• King Candy – Wreck-It Ralph
• Mor’du – Brave
• Pitch – Rise of the Guardians
• Queen Victoria – The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists

Best Female Character:

This is where A113Animation honours particular excellence in crafting a female character that isn't a weak, submissive one, nor a boring one, in crafting a female character who is one of the most interesting aspects of the film. 2012 didn't offer an awful lot of those, but the ones it did were truly memorable, and they are:

• Courtney Babcock – ParaNorman
• Merida – Brave
• Vanellope von Schweetz – Wreck-It Ralph

Best Song:

• “Into the Open Air” – Brave
• “Let it Grow” – The Lorax
• “Thneedville” – The Lorax
• “Touch the Sky” – Brave
• “When Can I See You Again?” – Wreck-It Ralph

Best Score:

The A113Animation Award for Best Score assesses two main factors: does the score make you feel? Does it make you care? Does it aid the overall cinematic experience? And, also, does it make you remember it? These five nominees, five very talented composers, most certainly do all of those things:

• Brave – Patrick Doyle 
• The Lorax – John Powell 
• ParaNorman – Jon Brion 
• Rise of the Guardians – Alexandre Desplat 
• Wreck-It Ralph – Henry Jackman

Best Animation and/or Graphics:

This award has historically been mis-titled, usually called the award for Best Animation, it has hitherto meant graphics. As in, rewarding the best looking film of the year, rewarding the film with the most photo-realistic renders (as most animated films nowadays are CG). However, this year, it means that and it means Best Animation: the film that either has the best overall look, whether that's in terms of beautiful hand-drawn lines (not this year, unfortunately), or daring stop-motion effects, or cartoony and thoughtful animation, in the purest sense of the word. These five nominees best exemplify those criteria:

• Brave - Pixar Animation Studios
• Hotel Transylvania - Sony Pictures Animation
• The Lorax - Illumination Entertainment
• ParaNorman - Laika Entertainment
• Rise of the Guardians - DreamWorks Animation

The Ben Kerfoot Award for Specific Character Animation or Design in Fur, Hair or Textures:

Our most specifically named award, the Ben Kerfoot award is similar in concept to the Best Animation and/or Graphics one, except this purely does look at CG, at the most beautiful and groundbreakingly realistic renders of fur, hair or textures on a character - and this year had lots:

• Angus – Brave
• The Donkey – The Lorax
• Forest Animals – The Lorax
• Merida’s Hair – Brave
• Mini-Bunny – Rise of the Guardians

Best Animated Short Film:

• Adam and Dog – Minkyu Lee
• Head Over Heels – Timothy Reckart
• La Luna – Pixar Animation Studios
• The Longest Daycare – The Simpsons/20th Century Fox
• Paperman – Walt Disney Animation Studios
• Toy Story Toons: Partysaurus Rex – Pixar Animation Studios
• The Snowman and the Snowdog – Channel 4/Lupus Films
• So You Want to be a Pirate! – Aardman Animations
• Tangled Ever After – Walt Disney Animation Studios
• Wildebeest – Birdbox Studio

Best Animation Book:

• The Art and Making of Peanuts Animation – Charles Solomon, Chronicle Books
• The Art of Brave – Jenny Lerew, Chronicle Books
• The Art of Rise of the Guardians – Ramin Zahed, Titan Books
• The Art of Wreck-It Ralph – Jennifer Lee & Maggie Malone, Chronicle Books
• The Fairest One of All: The Making of Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs – J.B. Kaufman, Aurum Press

The One to Watch Out For:

Looking forward to 2013 (although, given the delay, we're already here), this award tries to judge which film we'll be honouring the most this time next year. This year's nominees are:

• The Croods - DreamWorks Animation
• Despicable Me 2 - Illumination Entertainment
• Epic - Blue Sky Studios
• Frozen - Walt Disney Animation Studios
• Monsters University - Pixar Animation Studios

-- Live-Action Awards --

Best Visual Effects in a Live-Action Feature Film:

One of the largest application of computer animation is in visual effects, and indeed visual effects uses many facets of CG, whether it's for enhancing live-action effects, for creating fantastical characters or completely photo-real ones. Belowm are the five best instances of this I saw in 2012:

• The Amazing Spider-Man – Sony Pictures Imageworks
• The Avengers – ILM/Weta Digital
• The Dark Knight Rises – Double Negative
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey – Weta Digital
• Life of Pi – Rhythm & Hues

Best Live-Action Feature Film:

As with many an animation fan, I'm a general film fan, so I'm afraid this is a self-indulgent award, where I give my thoughts on the best non-animated films of 2012. The nominees are:

• The Avengers - Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Pictures, director Joss Whedon
• Chronicle - Davis Entertainment/20th Century Fox, director Josh Trank
• The Dark Knight Rises - Legendary Pictures/Syncopy Films/DC Entertainment/Warner Bros. Pictures, director Christopher Nolan
• Django Unchained - A Band Apart/The Weinstein Company, director Quentin Tarantino
• The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey - New Line Cinema/MGM/Wignut Films/Warner Bros. Pictures, director Peter Jackson
• Les Misérables - Working Title Films/Cameron Mackintosh Ltd./Universal Pictures, director Tom Hooper
• Life of Pi - Fox 2000 Pictures/20th Century Fox, director Ang Lee
• Lincoln - DreamWorks Studios/Reliance Entertainment/Participant Media/Amblin Entertainment/The Kennedy-Marshall Company, director Steven Spielberg
• Looper - Film District/Endgame Entertainment/DMG Entertainment/TriStar Pictures/Alliance Films, director Rian Johnson
• Skyfall - EON Productions/Danjaq LLC/MGM/Sony Pictures/Columbia Pictures, director Sam Mendes

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Pixar's Brave leads the charge with 11 nominations, spanning creative, musical and technical categories, (12 including its Art of nomination), followed by Disney's Wreck-It Ralph with 9 (10 including its Art of nomination). Laika's ParaNorman and Illumination's The Lorax have 7, followed by DreamWorks' Rise of the Guardians with 6 (7 including its Art of book), Aardman's The Pirates! with 5 and Sony's Hotel Transylvania with 2.

Congratulations to all the nominees (for all an A113Animation Award nomination is worth to you) and best of luck! The winners will be announced on 15th.