An evening when awards were handed out by Minnie, Goofy and Donald Duck and the show opened with William Shatner battling the voice of SpongeBob SquarePants for master of ceremonies duties were signs that the 37th Annual Annie Awards isn’t your typical awards show.
The Annies, hosted by the International Animated Film Society’s Hollywood branch, took place in Royce Hall on Saturday. The event brought members of the animation industry under one roof with honors for both lifelong achievement and work within the past year.
It was a chance for friends from across studio lines to reconnect and celebrate their love of animation. For UCLA alumnus and “9” writer-director Shane Acker, it was a chance to come back to his alma mater.
“It’s kind of cool to be back for an awards ceremony,” Acker said. “I came and presented my film here at the film school, which was a real treat. (I) got to see all my old professors and everything, but I haven’t been back to Royce in a long time.”
While no Bruins took home a prize, the ceremony recognized a diverse range of animated TV production and feature films. The excitement was evident as various sections of Royce erupted into cheers with the announcement of each winner.
Pete Docter, the winner for Directing in an Animated Feature Production for his work on “Up,” said this year’s nominees were different from past years because of the diversity.
“This year is great because now you have hand-drawn, stop-motion … and computer, of course,” Docter said. “You look from when I first got into this where it was all hand-drawn, and then you went through this intensive computer-only animation period, and now it’s everything.”
All three mediums left the Annies as winners with stop-motion’s “Coraline,” computer-animated “Prep and Landing” and the hand-drawn “The Princess and the Frog” leading with three awards each. “Up” left with the night’s big award, Best Animated Feature, which is known for predicting the year’s Oscar-winning animated feature film.
John Leguizamo, the voice of Sid from “Ice Age” and the man whose last name became a running joke after Shatner butchered it, said that the level of competition this year was good for animation.
“The more competition there is … the more advancement you get, the edgier it gets,” Leguizamo said. “You get some really interesting things coming out now.”
While innovation is something to celebrate, “Princess” marked the return to hand-drawn animation with Disney’s first such release in five years. After winning the award for Character Animation in a Feature Film, Eric Goldberg brought attention to what his win meant to hand-drawn animation artists.
“All I have to say is, this one’s for hand-drawn folks,” Goldberg said.
The ceremony also honored the lifetime achievement of several members of the animation industry, including Winsor McCay Award winners Tim Burton and Jeffrey Katzenberg.
The evening successfully brought together friends and fans of animation for the craft’s biggest night of the year.
“There are film festivals, there are things at the academy … but this is the biggest (night) where all the studios meet,” said “Princess” animator Andreas Deja. “(Artists) hop around from studio to studio, and you lose track of them. They’re not in your social circle anymore, so it’s nice to hook up again on evenings like this.”