To sum it up, while Toy Story 3 only has three nominations, they’re in the arguably most popular categories. However, it frustrates me that Megamind managed to get six nominations. I can see why HTTYD is doing well, but yeah… It just brings back memories of 2008.
And forgive me if this has been posted already! I did a search and found nothing.
Didn’t Disney withdraw all of their support for the Annies? So, while Toy Story 3’s poor performance is unfortunate and evidence of bias, it’s hardly surprising.
Personally, the Annies lost all of my respect when they gave their best film award (whatever it’s called) to Kung Fu Panda instead of WALL-E. No one’s denying that KFP is a good movie, but WALL-E’s just in a completely different league.
I was not aware of this! Is there an article about it?
ETA – Wow, I just looked at the current sponsors list; it’s so short! I’m wondering if studios Laika and Blue Sky simply didn’t contribute anything because they don’t have films in competition or because of people/companies buying votes.
This is “hearsay,” and I don’t know if it’s accurate, but there was some discussion of this on Awards Daily, and someone posted there that the reason Toy Story 3 appears in the Picture/Director/Screenplay categories is because those are the 3 categories that allow “write-in” votes (so Disney/Pixar didn’t actually have to submit TS3 for competition - the Annie voters could nominate it for those categories whether D/P wanted them to or not). Apparently, the other categories require work to be submitted for consideration, and Disney/Pixar chose not to submit their work. Again- I don’t know if this is factual, just something I read that makes sense given the nominations.
Ignoring all the controversy with the movies everybody is aware of, what’s the deal with the video game slot? What does best animated video game even mean? Aren’t all video games animated? If it’s describing the best use of animation in a video game, then that’s fine- and I agree with the list…but it’s not saying that. By the looks of these nominations I’m 90% sure that they just made a mistake with the title of the award. Not to mention, Shank sucked!
What? Personally I’m much more offended by the fact that at ‘best animated video game’, Donkey Kong Country Returns is nowhere to be seen. That game is so amazingly detailed! Dudes! I can barely see the polygons. All I see is the characters. Not to mention that the gameplay is the darned most fun thing since the original. Darn it all! These things are rigged! Rage!
Welp, excuse me for a moment. I tend to get defensive over my favorite games. You see, it’s been such a long time since DKC… and then I flip. Sorries.
HTTYD and TS3 deserve all praise that came for 'em, however.
As much as I love Megamind (to those who haven’t seen it, it’s better than the trailers made it out to be), I certainly don’t think it deserves this many nominations, especially in the Character Animation section. They should have nominated whoever did the animations for Gylfie or Digger in Ga’Hoole, not only is bird animation incredibly difficult, but the expressions for those two characters are one of the best I’ve seen for any animated film this year, HTTYD included.
While I’m still fan-gushing about LOTG, let me say that I’m incredibly pleased to see that Geoffrey Rush as Ezylryb in the ‘Best Voice Acting’ category. Animated Effects, Music, and Design Production are also appropriate and well-deserved nominations.
It’s also nice to see HTTYD and Despicable Me get a few mentions, as well as Carter Goodrich and Nico Marlet, two of my favourite concept artists get nods for Character Design. Chris Sanders and Lee Unkrich also get their Best Director noms, as they should, and ‘Regular Show’ and ‘Adventure Time’, two of my favourite new-gen cartoons, getting Best Animated TV Show pleases me somewhat.
Interesting that The Illusionist and Tangled bagged a few too. Of course, it’s fairly obvious that Dreamworks may have bought their way in this time too, judging from their number of noms. It’s a shame Pixar didn’t throw down the gauntlet this year, as that would’ve really shamed the Annie committee.
I’m glad they’re respecting TS3 and Despicable Me, even though their companies don’t give the Annies money. Personally, I’ve always hated the Annies, because it’s all about who will give them more money. I don’t care who wins, because chances are, they don’t deserve it.
I just hate the open membership voting of it. This means that anyone, can buy the right to vote in the Awards. It could be me, you, John Lasseter, and Osama bin Laden if he wanted to! All I’m saying is I perfer awards where memberships are earned and are for peers in the community only.
The Annies want to be the Oscars of Animation, to me they’re more like the People’s Choice Awards.
