4th Annual A113Animation Award Nominations

New logo designed by Damien Chevrier.

It's that time of year again; we're in the throe of awards season glitz and self-congratulation - and loving every minute of it! So, it's time for us here at A113Animation to get in on the act, with our 4th Annual A113Animation Awards! The winners will be announced on Saturday 15th February, and here's the list of what's nominated (it's a slightly different line-up of awards from last year, but broadly the same).

There's no Breakout Film award this year, as - although there were a lot of quality animated films - there was nothing that really changed or established my views on a particular studio. There's also no Best Animation Book award; due to my busy schedule, I just didn't have enough time to read, review and fairly judge many animation books last year. And bear in mind that I've not seen every animated film released last year. That said, without further ado, here are the nominees, in alphabetical order by film:

The 2013 nominees for the A113Animation Award for Best Animated Feature Film.

Best Animated Feature Film:

• The Croods - DreamWorks Animation
• Despicable Me 2 - Illumination Entertainment
• Frozen - Walt Disney Animation Studios
• From Up On Poppy Hill* - Studio Ghibli
• Monsters University - Pixar Animation Studios

* - Released in 2011 in Japan, just arrived in the US and UK in 2013. Eligible for nomination.

The People's Favourite Animated Film Award:
TBD - The poll is on the right sidebar, and embedded above.

Second Opinion Award:
TBD - Details to come later today.

The 'Oh So Close' Award:
TBA - The runner up; whichever film A113Animation deems to be the second best animated film of 2013.

Staff Picks:
TBA - I (William) decide the winners of the awards. But I do throw some power to the rest of our fabulous team too; Damien, Munir, Nadine and Mayra will all get a pick for their choice for the best animated film of 2013.

Best Director(s):

• Chris Sanders and Kirk DeMicco - The Croods
• Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud - Despicable Me 2
• Dan Scanlon - Monsters University
• Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee - Frozen
• Gorō Miyazaki - From Up On Poppy Hill

Best New Side Character(s):

• Chunky the Death Cat - The Croods
• Pollito - Despicable Me 2
• Mub and Grub - Epic
• Olaf - Frozen
• Art - Monsters University

Best Voice Acting:

• Elsie Fisher as Agnes - Despicable Me 2
• Steve Carrell as Gru - Despicable Me 2
• Josh Gad as Olaf - Frozen
• Billy Crystal as Mike Wazowski - Monsters University
• Charlie Day as Art - Monsters University

Best Villain:
For the sake of avoiding spoilers, we won't name the villains here; here are the animated films with the best baddies from 2013:

• Despicable Me 2
• Epic
• Frozen

Best Female Character:

This is where we honour a female character from one animated film from 2013. This award recognises creating a real, strong, interesting female character, who is neither boring nor meek. In a world where we're sadly just starting to see an emergence of strong female leads in big Hollywood films (The Hunger Games, for instance), these are the girls that impressed us this year:

• Agnes - Despicable Me 2
• M.K. - Epic
• Dean Hardscrabble - Monsters University
• Anna - Frozen
• Elsa - Frozen

Best Song:

• "Shine Your Way" by Owl City & Yuna - The Croods
• "Happy" by Pharrell Williams - Despicable Me 2
• "Let It Go" by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, performed by Idina Menzel - Frozen
• "For the First Time in Forever" by Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, performed by Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel - Frozen
• "Roar" by Axwell and Sebastian Ingrosso - Monsters University

Best Score:

• The Croods - Alan Silvestri
• Despicable Me 2 - Heitor Pereira and Pharrell Williams
• From Up on Poppy Hill - Satoshi Takebe
• Frozen - Christophe Beck
• Monsters University - Randy Newman

Best Animation and/or Graphics:

• The Croods
• Despicable Me 2
• From Up On Poppy Hill
• Frozen
• Monsters University

The Ben Kerfoot Award for Specific Character Animation or Design in Fur, Hair or Textures:
TBA - This award recognises the computer animated character that most keenly demonstrates the fantastic leaps forward taken in breathtaking, realistic and impressive renderings of fur, hair or texture in an animated film.

The 2013 nominees for the A113Animation Award for Best Animated Short Film.

Best Animated Short Film:

• The Bear & the Hare - Blinkink
• The Blue Umbrella - Pixar Animation Studios
• Get a Horse! - Walt Disney Animation Studios
• The Scarecrow - Moonbot Studios
• Toy Story of Terror! - Pixar Animation Studios*

* - Technically a TV special, but as it's less than half an hour long, it meets our requirements for this award.

The One to Watch Out For:
This is the film from next year (well, that is to say, this year: 2014) that we're most excited for; what we think will be the film we're awarding most generously this time next year. Every time we've awarded this one previously, we've given the award to Pixar's next offering. This year, Pixar don't have a film coming out, but there's a plethora of exciting-looking films nonetheless. Here are the nominations:

• Big Hero 6
• The BoxTrolls
• How to Train Your Dragon 2
• The Lego Movie
• The Wind Rises*

* - Released in Japan in 2013, but doesn’t arrive in the US and UK until 2014.

-- Live-Action Awards --

Best Visual Effects in a Live-Action Feature Film:

• Gravity - Framestore
• The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug - Weta Digital
• Iron Man 3 - Various companies; Chris Townsend, VFX supervisor
• Pacific Rim - ILM
• Star Trek Into Darkness - ILM

Best Live-Action Feature Film:
Bearing in mind that I didn't see a lot of this year's biggest releases and most acclaimed films (12 Years a Slave, Gravity, Captain Phillips, etc.), and several more aren't out in the UK yet (Her, Dallas Buyers Club), these are the ten best live-action film I saw last year. Here are the nominees:

• Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa - StudioCanal/BBC Films/BFI/Baby Cow Productions, director Declan Lowney
• American Hustle - Atlas Entertainment/Annapurna Pictures/Columbia Pictures, director David O. Russell
• Much Ado About Nothing - Bellwether Pictures, director Joss Whedon
• Mud - Everest Entertainment/Brace Cove Productions/FilmNation Entertainment ,director Jeff Nicholas
• Pacific Rim - Legendary Pictures/Warner Bros. Pictures, director Guillermo del Toro
• Rush - Exclusive Media/Revolution Films/Working Title Films/Imagine Entertainment/Relativity Media/Cross Creek Pictures, director Ron Howard
• Saving Mr. Banks - Walt Disney Pictures/BBC Films/Essential Media/Ruby Films/Hopscotch Features, director John Lee Hancock
• Thor: The Dark World - Marvel Studios/Walt Disney Pictures, director Alan Taylor
• The World’s End - Relativity Media/Working Title Films/Big Talk Productions/ director Edgar Wright
• The Way, Way Back - OddLot Entertainment/Fox Searchlight Pictures, directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash

--

Leading the pack, unsurprisingly, is Frozen, with 11 nominations (it has two nominations in both the Best Female Character and Best Song categories); Walt Disney Animation Studios have 13 nominations in total - including their Best Animated Short Film and The One to Watch Our For nominations. Monsters University follows with 9 (it has two nominations for Voice Acting); Pixar has 11 in total (it has two nominations for Short Film). Despicable Me 2 has 9 nominations (2 for Voice Acting), The Croods and From Up On Poppy Hill have 4, Epic has 3.

Congrats to all the nominees! Remember, the winners will be announced next Saturday.