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.
Pixar Animation Studios, known simply as Pixar, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its critically and commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Since 2006, Pixar has been a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of Disney Entertainment, a segment of the Walt Disney Company.
Charles Henry Selick Jr. is an American filmmaker and animator, best known for directing the stop-motion animated films The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), James and the Giant Peach (1996), Monkeybone (2001), Coraline (2009), and Wendell & Wild (2022). Selick is also known for his collaborations with the late voice actor and artist Joe Ranft.
Phillip Bradley Bird is an American filmmaker and animator. He has had a career spanning forty years in both animation and live-action.
John Alan Lasseter is an American film director, producer, and animator. He has served as the Head of Animation at Skydance Animation since 2019. Previously, he acted as the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios, as well as the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.
Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), sometimes shortened to Disney Animation, is an American animation studio that creates animated features and short films for The Walt Disney Company. The studio's current production logo features a scene from its first synchronized sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie (1928). Founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney after the closure of Laugh-O-Gram Studio, it is the oldest-running animation studio in the world. It is currently organized as a division of Walt Disney Studios and is headquartered at the Roy E. Disney Animation Building at the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California. Since its foundation, the studio has produced 62 feature films, from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) to Wish (2023), and hundreds of short films.
Peter Hans Docter is an American filmmaker and animator. He was credited as the director for the Pixar animated feature films Monsters, Inc. (2001), Up (2009), Inside Out (2015), and Soul (2020), and has served as the company's chief creative officer (CCO) since 2018. From his nine Academy Award nominations, he is a record-three time recipient of Best Animated Feature for Up, Inside Out and Soul. Docter has also won six Annie Awards from nine nominations, a BAFTA Children's Film Award and a Hochi Film Award. He describes himself as a "geeky kid from Minnesota who likes to draw cartoons".
Andrew Ayers Stanton is an American filmmaker and voice actor based at Pixar, which he joined in 1990. His film work includes co-writing and co-directing Pixar's A Bug's Life (1998), directing Finding Nemo (2003) and its sequel Finding Dory (2016), WALL-E (2008), and the live-action film, Disney's John Carter (2012), and co-writing all four and directing the upcoming fifth in Toy Story films (1995–2026) and Monsters, Inc. (2001).
Joseph Henry Ranft was an American animator, screenwriter, and voice actor. He worked for Pixar Animation Studios and Disney at Walt Disney Animation Studios and Disney Television Animation. His younger brother Jerome Ranft is a sculptor who also worked on several Pixar films.
Richard L. Moore is an American film and television animation director, screenwriter and voice actor. He is best known for serving as a director on primetime animated television series such as The Simpsons, The Critic and Futurama as well as directing the films Wreck-It Ralph (2012), Zootopia (2016) and Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018) for Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is a two-time Emmy Award winner, a three-time Annie Award winner and an Academy Award winner.
Kevin Lima is an American film director who has directed A Goofy Movie (1995), Tarzan (1999), 102 Dalmatians (2000), and Enchanted (2007). He is married to Brenda Chapman, the head of story for The Lion King (1994) and the co-director of The Prince of Egypt (1998).
Brenda Chapman is an American animator, screenwriter, storyboard artist, and director. In 1998, she became the first woman to direct an animated feature from a major studio, DreamWorks Animation's The Prince of Egypt. In 2012, she directed the Disney/Pixar film Brave with Mark Andrews, becoming the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Peter Sohn is an American filmmaker, animator, storyboard artist, and voice actor. He is best known for directing the Pixar animated films The Good Dinosaur (2015) and Elemental (2023), the latter of which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. He also voiced Emile in Ratatouille (2007), Squishy in Monsters University (2013), Ciccio in Luca (2021), and Sox in Lightyear (2022).
Brave is a 2012 American animated fantasy film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released by Walt Disney Pictures. The film was directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, co-directed by Steve Purcell, and produced by Katherine Sarafian, with John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and Pete Docter serving as executive producers. The story was written by Chapman, who also co-wrote the film's screenplay with Andrews, Purcell, and Irene Mecchi. The film stars the voices of Kelly Macdonald, Billy Connolly, Emma Thompson, Julie Walters, Robbie Coltrane, Kevin McKidd, and Craig Ferguson. Set in the Scottish Highlands, the film tells the story of Princess Merida of DunBroch (Macdonald) who defies an age-old custom, causing chaos in the kingdom by expressing the desire not to be betrothed. When Queen Elinor (Thompson), her mother, falls victim to a beastly curse and turns into a bear, Merida must look within herself and find the key to saving the kingdom. Merida is the first character in the Disney Princess line to be created by Pixar. The film is also dedicated to Pixar chairman and Apple co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs, who died before the film's release.
Merida is the main protagonist of the 2012 Disney/Pixar film Brave (2012). She is voiced by Scottish actress Kelly Macdonald. Merida was added to the Disney Princess line-up as the eleventh member, on May 11, 2013, becoming the first Disney Princess to be created by Pixar. Merida is also the only Scottish member of the Disney Princess line-up and the first to be single in her solo film.
