The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is given each year for the best animated film. An animated feature is defined by the academy as a film with a running time of more than 40 minutes in which characters' performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique, a significant number of the major characters are animated, and animation figures in no less than 75 percent of the running time. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first awarded in 2002 for films released in 2001.
The National Film Board of Canada is a Canadian public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and alternative dramas. In total, the NFB has produced over 13,000 productions since its inception, which have won over 5,000 awards. The NFB reports to the Parliament of Canada through the Minister of Canadian Heritage. It has bilingual production programs and branches in English and French, including multicultural-related documentaries.
The term independent animation refers to animated shorts, web series, and feature films produced outside a major national animation industry.
Queercore is a cultural/social movement that began in the mid-1980s as an offshoot of the punk subculture and a music genre that comes from punk rock. It is distinguished by its discontent with society in general, and specifically society's disapproval of the LGBT community. Queercore expresses itself in a DIY style through magazines, music, writing and film.
Tarzan is a 1999 American animated coming-of-age adventure comedy-drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is based on the 1912 story Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs, being the first animated major motion picture version of the story. The film was directed by Kevin Lima and Chris Buck and produced by Bonnie Arnold, from a screenplay written by Tab Murphy and the writing team of Bob Tzudiker and Noni White. It stars the voices of Tony Goldwyn as the title character along with Minnie Driver, Glenn Close, Rosie O'Donnell, Brian Blessed, Lance Henriksen, Wayne Knight, and Nigel Hawthorne.
Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Film Distribution. Based on Charles Perrault's 1697 fairy tale, the production was supervised by Clyde Geronimi, and was directed by Wolfgang Reitherman, Eric Larson, and Les Clark. Featuring the voices of Mary Costa, Bill Shirley, Eleanor Audley, Verna Felton, Barbara Luddy, Barbara Jo Allen, Taylor Holmes, and Bill Thompson, the film follows Princess Aurora, who was cursed by the evil fairy Maleficent to die from pricking her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel on her 16th birthday. She is saved by three good fairies, who alter Aurora's curse so that she falls into a deep sleep and will be awakened by true love's kiss.
Yellow Submarine is a 1968 animated jukebox musical fantasy adventure comedy film inspired by the music of the Beatles, directed by animation producer George Dunning, and produced by United Artists and King Features Syndicate. Initial press reports stated that the Beatles themselves would provide their own character voices. However, apart from composing and performing the songs, the real Beatles' only participation was in the closing scene of the film; the voices of their animated counterparts were provided by voice actors.
Byron P. Howard is an American animator, character designer, story artist, film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is best known as one of the directors of the Walt Disney Animation Studios films Bolt (2008), Tangled (2010), Zootopia (2016), Encanto (2021), and the upcoming Zootopia 2 (2025). He is the first LGBT director to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature twice for his work on Zootopia and Encanto.
Lori Goldston is an American cellist and composer. Accomplished in a wide variety of styles, including classical, world music, rock and free improvisation, she came to prominence as the touring cellist for Nirvana from 1993–1994 and appears on their live album MTV Unplugged in New York. She was a member of Earth, the Black Cat Orchestra, and Spectratone International, and also performs solo.
Lavender Country was an American country music band formed in 1972 whose self-titled 1973 album is the first known gay-themed album in country music history. Based in Seattle, Washington, the band originally consisted of lead singer and guitarist Patrick Haggerty (1944–2022), keyboardist Michael Carr, singer and fiddler Eve Morris and guitarist Robert Hammerstrom. Lavender Country has released two studio albums Lavender Country (1973) and Blackberry Rose (2019). The band had many members based in various cities with Haggerty serving as the only constant member.
Clark Spencer is an American film producer, businessman and studio executive best known for his work at Walt Disney Animation Studios, and for winning the Oscars for Best Animated Feature for his work on Zootopia and Encanto.
How to Train Your Dragon 2 is a 2014 American animated fantasy film loosely based on the book series of the same name by Cressida Cowell. Produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by 20th Century Fox, it is the sequel to How to Train Your Dragon (2010) and the second installment in the trilogy. Written and directed by Dean DeBlois and produced by Bonnie Arnold, the film stars the returning voices of Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T.J. Miller, and Kristen Wiig, along with Cate Blanchett, Djimon Hounsou, and Kit Harington as new additions. Set five years after the events of the first film, the film follows 20-year-old Hiccup and his friends as young adults as they encounter Valka, Hiccup's long-lost mother, and Drago Bludvist, a madman who wants to conquer the world.
Life, Animated is a 2016 American documentary film by director Roger Ross Williams. It is co-produced by Williams with Julie Goldman, Carolyn Hepburn and Christopher Clements. Life, Animated is based on journalist Ron Suskind's 2014 book Life, Animated: A Story of Sidekicks, Heroes, and Autism, which tells the story of his son, Owen Suskind, who struggled with autism and learned how to communicate with the outside world through his love of Disney animated films.
Ijeoma Oluo is an American writer. She is the author of So You Want to Talk About Race and has written for The Guardian,Jezebel, The Stranger, Medium, and The Establishment, where she was also an editor-at-large.
Drew Christie is an American animator and filmmaker. His animations have been featured in The Criterion Collection, The New York Times, Sundance TV and Vanity Fair. In 2007 he won The Seattle Times/Seattle International Film Festival's 3 Minute Masterpiece competition with ‘How to Bring Democracy to the Fish.’ In 2012 he was shortlisted for the Stranger Genius Awards for Song of the Spindle in the film category, which he won in 2014. In 2010 he received the Spotlight Award from Seattle Magazine. He contributed animation to the documentary film Nuts! and co-created the animated series Drawn & Recorded for Spotify with music producer T Bone Burnett. He resides on Whidbey Island, Washington.
Your Heart Breaks is an indie rock band from Seattle, Washington led by artist and musician Clyde Petersen. The group was formed in Bellingham, Washington in 1998. Petersen is transgender and his songwriting, particularly on album Drone Butch Blues (2019), often explores queer themes. The rest of the lineup of the group is fluid, however common collaborators include Karl Blau, Lori Goldston, Kimya Dawson, Kyle Field, Dylan Carlson and Adrienne Davies.
Aubrey Gordon, also known as Your Fat Friend, is an author, podcaster, and activist. She writes about fatness, fat acceptance, and anti-fat bias, and her podcast, Maintenance Phase, focuses on the poor science behind health and wellness fads.
This article features the history of the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) characters in animated productions under The Walt Disney Company, including films from the studios Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar, and programming from the Disney Branded Television channels as well as the streaming service Disney+. From 1983 onward, Disney struggled with LGBTQ representation in their animated series, and their content often included LGBTQ stereotypes or the content was censored in series which aired on Toon Disney such as Blazing Dragons. Some creators have also criticized Disney studio executives of cutting LGBTQ scenes from their shows in the past, or criticized that their shows were not seen as part of the "Disney brand", like The Owl House.
