The Academy Awards of Merit, commonly known as the Oscars or Academy Awards, are awards for artistic and technical merit for the film industry. They are presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) in the United States, in recognition of excellence in cinematic achievements as assessed by the Academy's voting membership. The Oscars are widely considered to be the most prestigious awards in the film industry.
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 term independent animation refers to animated shorts, web series, and feature films produced outside a major national animation industry.
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, 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.
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.
Laika, LLC is an American stop-motion animation studio specializing in feature films, commercial content for all media, music videos, and short films. The studio is best known for its stop-motion feature films Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings and Missing Link. It is owned by Nike co-founder Phil Knight and is located in Hillsboro, Oregon, part of the Portland metropolitan area. Knight's son, Travis Knight, acts as Laika's president and CEO.
The Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film is a Golden Globe Award that was awarded for the first time at the 64th Golden Globe Awards in 2007. It was the first time that the Golden Globe Awards had created a separate category for animated films since its establishment. The nominations are announced in January and an awards ceremony is held later in the month. Initially, only three films were nominated for best animated film, in contrast to five nominations for the majority of other awards. The Pixar film Cars was the first recipient of the award.
Sinbad: Beyond the Veil of Mists is a 2000 Indian-American animated film. It is the first feature-length computer animation film created exclusively using motion capture. While many animators worked on the project, the human characters were entirely animated using motion capture. It was filmed at Raleigh Studios in Los Angeles, over a three-month period in 1997. The film was produced by Pentafour Software, now known as Pentamedia Graphics.
Byron P. Howard is an American animator, character designer, story artist, film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is best known as the director of the Walt Disney Animation Studios films Bolt (2008), Tangled (2010), Zootopia (2016), and Encanto (2021). He is the first LGBT director to win the Oscar for Best Animated Feature twice for his work on Zootopia and Encanto.
Cartoon Saloon is an Irish animation film, short film and television studio based in Kilkenny which provides film TV and short film services. The studio is best known for its animated feature films The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, The Breadwinner and Wolfwalkers. Their works have received five Academy Award nominations, their first four feature length works all received nominations for Best Animated Feature and one for Best Animated Short Film. The company also developed the cartoon series Skunk Fu!, Puffin Rock, Dorg Van Dango and Viking Skool. As of 2020, the studio employs 300 animators.
UTV Motion Pictures was the feature film unit of UTV Software Communications founded by Ronnie Screwvala and Zarina Screwvala in 1996 as UTV Motion Pictures Plc., the film distribution division of UTV Software Communications. It was one of the leading film studios in India and one of the largest production studios in South Asia. The studio's activities spanned creative development, production, marketing, distribution, licensing, merchandising, and worldwide syndication of films in Indian territories. It was also a distribution label of Disney for feature films produced by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures in India.
Rajiv Chilakalapudi, also known as Rajiv Chilaka and Sitarama Rajiv Chilakalapudi, is the founder and CEO of Hyderabad-based Green Gold Animations and the creator of a few cartoons including Krishna cartoon series and Chhota Bheem which has now been made into an animated series and films. For his work in presenting cartoons at affordable price, Chilaka was conferred with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by the Academy of Art University, San Francisco in 2016. He was the recipient of the 2013 School of Computing and Engineering Alumni Achievement Award at the University of Missouri - Kansas City.
Pandavas: The Five Warriors is a 2000 Indian English-language animated Hindu faith film directed by Usha Ganesh Raja and produced by Pentamedia Graphics. Based on the five Pandava brothers from the Indian sacred religious epic based on holy scripture the Mahabharata, it is India's first computer-animated film, and won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in English.
Son of Alladin is a 2003 Indian animated film based on the life of the Aladdin written and directed by Singeetam Srinivasa Rao. Produced by Pentamedia Graphics, the film had 1100 shots and 125 characters.
Rahul Chandrakant Thakkar is an Indian-American software inventor who was one of the 33 recipients of Academy Award for scientific and technical achievement in 2016. Thakkar won the Academy Award for creating the "groundbreaking design" of DreamWorks Animation Media Review System, a scalable digital film review platform.
Little Krishna is an Indian 3D animated epic television series created by Reliance Entertainment in 2009. It was originally aired on Nickelodeon and later aired on Discovery Kids and Sun TV.
