4th Annual A113Animation Awards Results

It feels strangely surreal that our little animation blog has been going long enough to be at its 4th annual Awards, but here we are. 2012 was an incredibly strong year for animation, 2013 was less strong. There were some really good animated films released last year, but far fewer great ones than in previous years. As opposed to last year, then, there wasn't much of a spread of awards this year; one film dominated, and you'll never guess which one... So, check out the results below: the winners are in bold and there's a breakdown of who won what and why at the bottom.

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:

• Frozen - Walt Disney Animation Studios (105/167 votes; 62.87%)

Second Opinion Award:

• Monsters University - Pixar Animation Studios (Decided by Ben Zacuto)

The 'Oh So Close' Award:

• Monsters University - Pixar Animation Studios

Damien's Choice Award:

• Frozen - Walt Disney Animation Studios

Munir's Choice Award:

• Frozen - Walt Disney Animation Studios

Nadine's Choice Award:

• Frozen - Walt Disney Animation Studios

Mayra's Choice Award:

• The Wind Rises - Studio Ghibli

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:

• Despicable Me 2
• Epic
• Frozen

Best Female Character:

• 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:

• Professor Brandywine - Monsters University

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:

• Big Hero 6 - Walt Disney Animation Studios
• The BoxTrolls - Laika Entertainment
• How to Train Your Dragon 2 - DreamWorks Animation
• The Lego Movie - Warner Bros. Animation
• The Wind Rises* - Studio Ghibli

* - 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:

• 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

--

Between Wreck-It Ralph, Brave, ParaNorman, The Pirates! and the many other truly great animated films released in 2012, it was hard to pick a real standout film - we simply made do with picking the best of the best. In 2013, it seemed for the longest time that we weren't going to have a single standout either (but more due to a generally underwhelming year than a slate of brilliant films), and Monsters University seemed to be the best the year had to offer. Then Frozen happened.

Disney have been on the mother of all comebacks as of late; since John Lasseter took the creative reins of Walt Disney Animation Studios around 2006, Pixar's big brother has been clawing its way back to the top. In 2010 (2011 in the UK), they released Tangled, a stellar film that took home two A113Animation Awards in our (smaller scale) second prize-giving. In 2012, they released Wreck-It Ralph, a true gem, which went on to win six A113Animation Awards, including Best Animated Feature Film - again though, 2012 was a great year, and there was a spread of awards amongst other films. This time round, however, Disney dominated. Frozen won a magnificent twelve awards, including Best Animated Feature and three of our four staff's choice awards!

Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, the recipients of this year's A113Animation Award
for Best Director(s).

Myself (awarding the Best Animated Feature Film Award), Damien, Munir and Nadine all gave Frozen our thumbs up, as did the majority of you guys, with the film getting over 60% of the votes in our People's Choice poll. Pixar's Monsters University came second (although not particularly closely), with just shy of 20% of votes. Frozen also won for directors Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, two awards for Olaf (Best New Side Character and Best Voice Acting for Josh Gad), Best Villain, Best Female Character (Elsa, not shockingly), and - really not shockingly - both of our music awards: Best Song ("Let It Go") and Best Score (Christophe Beck).

Walt Disney Animation Studios continued their domination with a further two wins: Best Animated Short Film for the manic, clever Mickey Mouse short Get a Horse!, and The One to Watch Out For for their extremely interesting lesser-known Marvel comic-adaptation, Big Hero 6. We've awarded the One to Watch Out For Award to a Pixar film every year previously, but: a) Pixar aren't releasing a film in 2014, and b) we aren't underestimating WDAS any longer.

Professor Brandywine won Pixar this year's Ben Kerfoot Award for Specific
Character Animation or Design in Fur, Hair or Textures.

Monsters University was the second-biggest winner this year, taking home four awards. Pixar's first prequel took home the 'Oh So Close' Award as 2013's second best animated film. The film also took home the Second Opinion Award, judged by our competition winner Ben Zacuto. And unsurprisingly - given that they pioneered computer animated films - Pixar took home both of our technical awards: Best Animation and/or Graphics and our esoterically named Ben Kerfoot Award for the magnificent fur on the very Bueller-esque Professor Brandywine.

We ditched two awards this year though, the Breakout Film Award (despite the fact that lots of films impressed me, no films this year changed or established my view of a studio) and the Best Animation Boom Award (due to time constraints, I didn't have chance to check many of these out last year).

And here's a few words from each of our other four writers on why they chose the films they chose:

Damien on choosing Frozen: "After a phenomenal 2012, the animated films of 2013 paled in comparison. Only a few were unforgettable, and that's what Frozen was to me.
A clever story, great songs/score and appealing characters, it's Disney at its best and my favourite classic fairy tale from the Mouse House in a long time. Perhaps it wasn't a perfect movie - or even the one with the least flaws of 2013 - but it was the animated feature I enjoyed the most."

Munir on choosing Frozen: For Munir's explanation, check out tomorrow's concluding Disney Retrospective review.

Nadine on choosing Frozen: "My favourite animated film from the last year has been Frozen! I've seen it twice and just love it; it's sweet and I think it's very traditional Disney in a way, but, at the same time, I love the changes in fairy tale traditions with narrative and character types. The songs are amazing, but the animation is also gorgeous!"

Mayra on bucking the trend and picking The Wind Rises: "I had a little bit of difficulty making a choice on this one. Of course my obvious favorite film of the year was The Wind Rises, but there was a somewhat close second, Turbo. While it seems that Turbo was the underdog this year, which not many actually got behind, I still find the film charming, and funny, and a lot better than most of the disappointing films this year.

However, when it comes down to it, I have to choose the most well rounded film, the film that in every aspect is the best film I saw this year and that of course is The Wind Rises. Studio Ghibli's latest does what other studios only strive to do: tell a wonderful story that transcends genres and time, while also being a work of art.

And while I could have gone with Turbo, because I wanted to chose something that reflects my personality, while also being fun, influential and hopefully groundbreaking for future works (in terms of casting and characters), I think the film that will truly stand the test of time is The Wind Rises." Check out Mayra's plea for The Wind Rises to win the Oscar here.

That's all, folks! 2013 may have been a bit lacklustre, but we got at least one classic out of it, and a good few other really enjoyable films. Plus, 2014 looks to more than compensate for that - just look how positive the reviews for early-openers The Lego Movie and Mr. Peabody & Sherman are!