Academy Award for Best Animated Feature facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
Gints Zilbalodis, 2025 co-recipient
Presented by	Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)
Country	United States
First awarded	Shrek (2001)
Currently held by	Flow (2024)

The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is an Academy Award presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) for the best animated feature 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.

History

For much of the Academy Awards' history, the AMPAS was resistant to the idea of a regular award for animated features, considering there were simply too few produced to justify such consideration. Instead, the Academy occasionally bestowed special Oscars for exceptional productions, usually for Walt Disney Pictures, such as for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1938, and the Special Achievement Academy Award for the live action/animated hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1989 and Toy Story in 1996. In fact, prior to the award's creation, only one animated film was nominated for Best Picture: 1991's Beauty and the Beast, also by Disney.

By 2001, the rise of sustained competitors to Disney in the feature animated film market, such as DreamWorks Animation (founded by former Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg), created an increase of film releases of significant annual number enough for AMPAS to reconsider. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature was first given out at the 74th Academy Awards, held on March 24, 2002. The academy included a rule that stated that the award would not be presented in a year in which fewer than eight eligible films opened in theaters. It dropped the rule on April 23, 2019, to make voting for animated films more acceptable. People in the animation industry, as well as fans, expressed hope that the prestige from this award and the resulting boost to the box office would encourage the increased production of animated features.

In 2009, when the nominee slots for Best Picture were doubled to ten, Up was nominated for both Animated Feature and Picture at the 82nd Academy Awards, the first to do so since the inception of the Animated Feature category. This feat was repeated the following year by Toy Story 3. From 2010 onward, with the increasing competitiveness of the Animated Feature category, Pixar (a perennial nominee) did not receive nominations for several recent films due to the more mixed critical response and comparatively low box-office receipts, while Pixar's sister studio Disney Animation won their first three awards but in similar response due to rivalry between critically-acclaimed animation studios outside of Disney.

At the same year, the Academy enacted a new rule regarding the motion capture technique employed in films such as A Christmas Carol (2009) and The Adventures of Tintin (2011), directed by Academy Award for Best Director winners Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg respectively, and how they might not be eligible in this category in the future. The new rule now reads "An animated feature film is defined as a motion picture with a running time of greater than 40 minutes, in which movement and characters’ performances are created using a frame-by-frame technique. Motion capture by itself is not an animation technique. In addition, a significant number of the major characters must be animated, and animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture’s running time." This rule was possibly made to prevent nominations of live-action films that rely heavily on motion capture, such as Avatar (2009).

In 2022, it was unclear whether Marcel the Shell with Shoes On would be eligible for the award at the 95th Academy Awards due to being a live-action/stop-motion animated hybrid. Director Dean Fleischer Camp said that he and A24 had to submit documentation in order to prove the film had enough animation to meet the award's minimum requirements. The AMPAS officially deemed the film eligible for consideration in the Animated Feature category and was eventually nominated for said category.

Flow makes history as the first independent or indie film to win an Academy Award for that category as well as the first time that a non-Disney film to win an Academy Award for that category for three consecutive years.

Winners and nominees

Hayao Miyazaki won in 2003 for Spirited Away and again in 2024 for The Boy and the Heron.

Andrew Stanton won in 2004 for Finding Nemo and again in 2009 for WALL-E.

Brad Bird won in 2005 for The Incredibles and again in 2008 for Ratatouille.

Nick Park won in 2006 for Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

George Miller won in 2007 for Happy Feet.

Pete Docter holds the record for most wins in this category, winning three times for Up in 2010, Inside Out in 2016, and Soul in 2021.

Lee Unkrich won in 2011 for Toy Story 3 and again in 2018 for Coco.

Gore Verbinski won in 2012 for Rango.

Chris Buck won in 2014 for Frozen.

Jonas Rivera won in 2016 for Inside Out and again in 2020 for Toy Story 4.

Byron Howard won in 2017 for Zootopia and again in 2022 for Encanto.

Guillermo del Toro won in 2023 for Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio.

2000s

2010s

2020s

Multiple wins and nominations

Nominees

Studios

Notes

Franchises

Superlatives

Age

Length

Milestones and records

Films and production companies

• Pixar holds the most wins for a studio with 11, the most nominations with 19, and the most consecutive wins (4, between 2007 and 2010).
  • Pixar, with 11 wins, and Walt Disney Animation Studios, with 4, are both owned by the Walt Disney Company, which has 15 wins for the category in total.
• Laika has the most nominations without a win, with 6 films.
• Almost all the winners have been computer-animated films. The exceptions are Spirited Away and The Boy and the Heron, which are the only hand-drawn animated films, and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, the only stop motion animated films to win.
• Toy Story is the only franchise to win this award twice, for its third and fourth films. Additionally, the third and fourth films are so far the only two sequels to win this award.
• Shrek and Wallace & Gromit are the most-nominated franchise, with 4 (and having won once) each. Other franchises with three nominations include How to Train Your Dragon and Cartoon Saloon's "Irish Folklore Trilogy" (consisting of The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, and Wolfwalkers); both hold the record as the most-nominated franchises without a win.
• Of the several adult animated films (judging from their MPAA ratings), The Triplets of Belleville was the first PG-13 rated nominee, Anomalisa and Memoir of a Snail are so far the only R-rated animated films to be nominated, and The Boy and the Heron became the first PG-13-rated winner.
• Studio Ghibli (Japan) has the most wins (two) and nominations (seven) for a non-US studio; Spirited Away and The Boy and the Heron are the only non-English language films to win.
• Flee is the first animated documentary film to be nominated.
• Shaun the Sheep Movie (and its sequel), The Red Turtle, Robot Dreams, and Flow are the only dialogue-free films nominated, with the latter won.
• From 2019-2023, each year has had at least one nominee that was mainly released via streaming, with two winners (denoted in bold): Klaus (Netflix) in 2019; Soul (Disney+) in 2020; Luca (Disney+) and The Mitchells vs. the Machines (Netflix) in 2021; Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (Netflix), The Sea Beast (Netflix) and Turning Red (Disney+) in 2022; and Nimona (Netflix) in 2023.
• 2005 and 2011 are the only two-time years that Disney and Pixar films were completely shut out of the Best Animated Feature category.
• Flow is the first independent film to win in this category.

People

• Pete Docter has the most wins of any individual (3), and is tied with Hayao Miyazaki and Chris Sanders for the most nominations (4). Additionally, Miyazaki has the most wins and nominations for a non-US individual.
• Hayao Miyazaki became the oldest winner in 2024 at the age of 83; he previously held the record between 2003 and 2023.
• Gints Zilbalodis is the youngest winner in 2025, having done so at the age of 30, beating Andrew Stanton in a 21-year streak between 2003 and 2024

• Chris Sanders is the had receiving the most nominations without winning, with four each.
• In diversity, Brenda Chapman was the first woman to win for Brave, Peter Ramsey was the first black director to win for Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, and Yvett Merino was the first woman of color to win for Encanto.
• Byron Howard was the first queer person to win the award, doing so in 2017 for Zootopia and again in 2022 for Encanto. This also makes him the only two-time queer winner.

See also

In Spanish: Anexo:Óscar a la mejor película de animación para niños

• Lists of animated films
• List of animation awards
• List of animated feature films nominated for Academy Awards
• List of submissions for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature