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.
Aladdin is a 1992 American animated musical fantasy comedy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is based on the Arabic folktale "Aladdin" from the One Thousand and One Nights. The film was produced and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements from a screenplay they cowrote with the writing team of Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio. Featuring the voices of Scott Weinger, Robin Williams, Linda Larkin, Jonathan Freeman, Frank Welker, Gilbert Gottfried, and Douglas Seale, the film follows the titular Aladdin, an Arabian street urchin, who finds a magic lamp containing a genie. With the genie's help, Aladdin disguises himself as a wealthy prince and tries to impress the Sultan of Agrabah in order to win the heart of his free-spirited daughter, Princess Jasmine, as the Sultan's evil vizier Jafar plots to steal the magic lamp for his own uses.
Beauty and the Beast is a 1991 American animated musical romantic fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is based on the 1756 fairy tale of the same name by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, while also containing ideas from the 1946 French film also of the same name directed by Jean Cocteau. The film was directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise and produced by Don Hahn, from a screenplay by Linda Woolverton.
Brother Bear is a 2003 American animated musical fantasy comedy-drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Aaron Blaise and Robert Walker and produced by Chuck Williams, from a screenplay written by Tab Murphy, Lorne Cameron, David Hoselton, and the writing team of Steve Bencich and Ron J. Friedman. The film stars the voices of Joaquin Phoenix, Jeremy Suarez, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas, Jason Raize, and D.B. Sweeney. Brother Bear follows an Alaska native boy named Kenai as he pursues a bear and kills it, but the Spirits, incensed by this unnecessary death, change Kenai into a bear himself as punishment. In order to be human again, Kenai must travel to a mountain where the Northern lights touch the earth.
Howard Elliott Ashman was an American playwright, lyricist and stage director. He is most widely known for his work on feature films for Walt Disney Animation Studios, for which Ashman wrote the lyrics and Alan Menken composed the music. Ashman has been credited as being a main driving force behind the Disney Renaissance. His work included songs for Little Shop of Horrors, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin. Tim Rice took over to write the rest of the songs for the latter film after Ashman's death in 1991.
Glen Keane is an American animator, director, author and illustrator. As a character animator at Walt Disney Animation Studios for 38 years (1974–2012), he worked on feature films including The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Tarzan and Tangled. He received the 1992 Annie Award for character animation and the 2007 Winsor McCay Award for lifetime contribution to the field of animation. He was named a Disney Legend in 2013, a year after retiring from the studio.
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.
Joseph C. Grant was an American animator, artist and writer.
Christopher Michael Sanders is an American filmmaker, animator, and voice actor. His credits include Lilo & Stitch (2002) and How to Train Your Dragon (2010), both of which he co-wrote and co-directed with Dean DeBlois, The Croods (2013) with Kirk DeMicco, and The Call of the Wild (2020). He is also known for creating the story behind Lilo & Stitch and for creating and voicing its latter title character in the film and its franchise.
Roger Allers is an American film director, screenwriter, animator, storyboard artist, and playwright. He is best known for co-directing Disney's The Lion King (1994), the highest-grossing traditionally animated film of all time, and for writing the Broadway adaptation of the same name. He also directed Sony Pictures Animation's first feature-length animated film, Open Season (2006) and the animated adaptation of The Prophet.
Will Finn is an American animator, voice actor, storyboard artist, and director.
Donald Paul Hahn is an American film producer who is credited with producing some of the most successful animated films in recent history, including Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King.
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.
The Disney Renaissance was a period from 1989 to 1999 during which Walt Disney Feature Animation returned to producing critically and commercially successful animated films. These were mostly musical adaptations of well-known stories, similar to the films produced during the era of Walt Disney from the 1930s to 1960s. The resurgence allowed Disney's animated films to become a powerhouse of successes at the domestic and foreign box office, earning much greater profits than most of the Disney films of previous eras.
Mark Alan Henn is an American animator and film director. His work includes animated characters for Walt Disney Animation Studios films, most notably leading or titular characters and heroines. He served as the lead animator for Ariel in The Little Mermaid (1989), Belle in Beauty and the Beast (1991), Jasmine in Aladdin (1992), young Simba in The Lion King (1994), the title character in Mulan (1998), and Tiana in The Princess and the Frog (2009). He directed the short film John Henry (2000). Henn spent a total of 43 years at Walt Disney Animation Studios, from 1980 until his retirement in 2023.
Daniel St. Pierre is an American film director, art director, production designer, voice actor, animator, and musician. For his work in bringing the Deep Canvas technique to the Disney film Tarzan (1999), he received a 1999 Annie Award nomination for Outstanding Individual Achievement for Production Design in an Animated Feature Production.
Waking Sleeping Beauty is a 2009 American documentary film directed by Disney film producer Don Hahn and produced by Hahn and former Disney executive Peter Schneider. The film documents the history of Walt Disney Feature Animation from 1984 to 1994, covering the rise of a period referred to as the Disney Renaissance.
Robert Walker was a Canadian-born American animator who co-directed the Academy Award-nominated Brother Bear with Aaron Blaise.
