Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph topped the feature competition at the 40th annual Annie Awards, winning five trophies including best animated feature and best directing for Rich Moore.
Wreck-It Ralph, Brave and ParaNorman are all nominated for Oscars for best animated feature. The final two Oscar nominees, Frankenweenie and The Pirates! Band of Misfits, came up empty handed.
In addition to best animated feature and direction,Wreck-It Ralph won trophies for writing, music and voice acting for Alan Tudyk as King Candy.
Brave received awards for editing and production design, ParaNorman was honored for character animation and character design, and Rise of the Guardians was recognized for animated effects and storyboarding.
In other categories that featured Academy Award contenders, Disney’s Oscar nominatedPaperman was honored for animated short subject; Life of Pi topped the category for best animated character in a live action feature, on the strength of its CG Bengal tiger; and The Avengers claimed the award for animated effects in a live action feature. Life of Pi and The Avengers are both nominated for the visual effects Oscar.
The Annie Awards recognize animation in categories including features, television, and video games. Overall, Disney (including Pixar and Marvel) was a big winner, collecting a total of 12 awards.
Dreamworks Animation’s series Dragons: Riders of Berk topped the television competition winning four Annies including best animated TV production for children. DWA titles won a total of seven awards during the evening.
This is the second year that the Annie Awards have included categories for editors. This year, Nicholas C. Smith, Robert Grahamjones, and David Suther won the feature editing category for Brave; and Hugo Morales, Adam Arnold, Davrick Waeden, andOtto Ferraye were honored in TV for Kung Fu Panda – Enter the Dragon.
During the ceremony, Terry Gilliam, Oscar Grillo and Mark Henn received the Winsor McCay Award for career contributions to animation. Additionally, Howard Green was the recipient of the June Foray Award and Toon Boom Animation was honored with the Ub Iwerks Award.
Some might remember that the Disney organization boycotted the 2011 Annie Awards over its voting procedures. Revisions were made to the system, and Disney and Pixar returned to participate a year ago for the 2012 event.
For this 40th annual awards ceremony, Leonard Maltin, Rob Paulsen, Maurice Lamarche and Seth Green shared hosting duties.
The complete list of nominees and winners (in red and offset by an asterisk) below: http://bit.ly/14yAYcL
by Carolyn Giardina for hollywoodreporter.com
Doodle Dandy 