36th Annual Annie Award Winners

The Annie Awards for this past year have come and gone, and the many artistic and technical awards that the animation community hands out to its many, deserving recipients have made their way to their respective owners. Taking place at UCLA's Royce Hall, the 36th Annual Annie Awards resumed their critical acknowledgement of key individuals (and teams of individuals) responsible for the development or production of the past year's best animation for film and television.

Taking the ceremony by storm this year was the DreamWorks Animation movie Kung Fu Panda, which registered an astounding 15 combined awards. Most notably drawing applause for Best Animated Feature, Best Directing (in a Feature), and Production Design (in a Feature); Kung Fu Panda, or one of its individual contributors, won every single category for which it was originally nominated. Suddenly, the widespread professional acknowledgement of the artistic merits of feature animation feels within reach

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In front of an audience of a reported 1800 or more last week, the masters of the cartoon world honored their own, regardless of the media type--claymation, traditional animation, or computer animation. Nickelodeon's fantasy-adventure epic Avatar: the Last Airbender, which finished its TV run last fall, took home two high profile awards: Best Directing (for TV) and Best Animated TV Production (for Children)

Meanwhile, the paper-model United Airlines item "Heart" rightfully earned the nod for Best Animated Television Commercial, and in the category for domestic direct-to-video releases, Futurama: The Beast with a Billion Backs won the category for Best Animated Home Entertainment Production.

ASIFA-Hollywood's Annie Awards helps bring awareness to a string of individuals and production teams whose faces are perhaps not as recognizable as they should me.

Although the characters they create and the stories they narrate are increasingly familiar, the minds and these projects certainly deserve their due. Originally designed to recognize the lifetime achievement of the industry's most notable figures, the Annie Awards have consciously evolved into a familial event that recognizes the best the animation community has to offer.

The award winners are marked in italics on the following pages
of this AnimationInsider.net feature news article.

on the Annie Awards: Since 1972, ASIFA-Hollywood has hosted an annual awards ceremony to honor individuals who have made significant contributions to the art of animation. Originally designed to honor the lifetime achievements of legendary veterans of the field, the Annie Awards are now awarded in competition for the year's best animation efforts, recognizing outstanding productions in feature films, videos, television programs, commercials, animated interactive productions, as well as individual achievement by artists, writers and voice talent. The Annie Awards are regarded as animation's highest honor, and the ceremony is one of ASIFA-Hollywood's most prestigious and elegant events.