Academy Award for Best Animated Feature facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Academy Award for Best Animated Feature
2023 co-recipient: Hayao Miyazaki
Presented by	Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS)
Country	United States
First awarded	Shrek (2001)
Currently held by	The Boy and the Heron (2023)

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 entire AMPAS membership has been eligible to choose the winner since the award's inception. If there are sixteen or more films submitted for the category, the winner is voted from a shortlist of five films, otherwise there will only be three films on the shortlist.

As of the 96th Academy Awards ceremony, Studio Ghibli's co-recipients Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki are the most recent winners in this category for their work (as director-producer duo, respectively) of The Boy and the Heron, the former marks his third Asian filmmaker to win twice in the same category, shared with Akira Kurosawa (Best International Feature Film) and Ang Lee (Best Director), and the first Asian to do so as well as the oldest winner to win at the age of 83.

History

Recognition of animated films during the late-20th century

For much of the Academy Awards' history, 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.

Inauguration of the category

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.

Expansion of Best Picture category

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.

Decline of motion-capture films

In 2010, 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. This rule was possibly made to prevent nominations of live-action films that rely heavily on motion capture, such as Avatar (2009).

First attempt of stop-motion film in a live-action environment

In 2022, it was unclear Marcel the Shell with Shoes On would be eligible for the award at the 95th Academy Awards due to use of a live-action film blends with stop-motion animated. 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. Nonetheless, the AMPAS officially deemed the film eligible for consideration in the Animated Feature category and was eventually nominated for said category.

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

Studios and franchises with multiple nominations

Studios

Franchises

Age superlatives

Milestones

Studios and films

• Pixar has the most wins with 11 and the most nominations of any studio with 18.
  • They won the award in four years in a row with their film released between 2007 and 2010.
• 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.
• Spirited Away and The Boy and the Heron (each from Japan) are the first and second non-English language films, respectively, to win.
• Toy Story is the only franchise with multiple wins, for its third and fourth films.
• Shrek (with one win) is the most-nominated franchise with four nominations.
  • How to Train Your Dragon and Cartoon Saloon's "Irish Folklore Trilogy" (consisting of The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, and Wolfwalkers) are the most-nominated franchises without a win (three nominations each).
• Of the 12 adult animated films nominated, nine of them —The Triplets of Belleville, Persepolis, The Wind Rises, My Life as a Courgette, The Breadwinner, Loving Vincent, Isle of Dogs, Flee and The Boy and the Heron were each rated PG-13, Anomalisa is the only R-rated animated film to be nominated in this category, and Chico and Rita and I Lost My Body were not rated by the MPA but both were rated TV-MA or due to subject matter and mature themes. The Boy and The Heron became the first PG-13 film to win.
• There have been years when multiple animated films from the same studio were nominated. They are:
  • 2002 – Disney's Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet
  • 2004 – DreamWorks' Shrek 2 and Shark Tale
  • 2011 – DreamWorks' Kung Fu Panda 2 and Puss in Boots
  • 2016 – Disney's Zootopia and Moana
  • 2020 – Pixar's Onward and Soul
  • 2021 – Disney's Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto
  • 2022 – Netflix's The Sea Beast and Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio
• Up and Toy Story 3 are the first two films to have won both Best Animated Feature and to have received Best Picture nominations. Their nominations after the Academy expanded the potential number of nominees for Best Picture from 5 to 10.
• Shrek is the only non-Disney and/or Pixar animated film to be nominated for a screenwriting category, Best Adapted Screenplay, while winning the inaugural Best Animated Feature category.
• As of 2024, Shrek and WALL-E are the only winners that are inducted in the National Film Registry.
• Studio Ghibli (Japan) has the most wins for a non-US studio with two wins.
• Studio Ghibli has the most nominations for a non-US studio with seven films (winning twice for Spirited Away and The Boy and the Heron).
• Flee has the most nominations (3) for both adult animated and documentary film, and was the first film to be nominated in the categories of Best Animated Feature, Best International Feature Film and Best Documentary Feature Film simultaneously in a single year.
• Two motion capture-related computer-animated films were nominated before a rule change in 2010 disqualified such films: Monster House and Happy Feet (the latter won the award).
• According to some sources, American indie animated film distributor GKIDS declares the recent film as a "lucky number 13", indicates a loss of previous twelve nominations and winning the latter film in the same category as a good luck charm.

People

• In 2013, Brenda Chapman was the first woman to win for Brave.
• After his win in 2023, Guillermo del Toro was the first filmmaker to win both the Best Animated Picture (for his adaptation of Pinocchio) and Best Picture (for 2017's The Shape of Water).
• Pete Docter has the most wins of any individual, winning three awards for Up, Inside Out and Soul.
• Hayao Miyazaki has the most nominations for a non-US individual, with four films (tied with Pete Docter).
• Hayao Miyazaki (Japan) has the most wins for a non-US individual with two.
• Ron Clements, Dean DeBlois, Travis Knight, Tomm Moore, and Chris Sanders are tied for receiving the most nominations without winning, with three each.

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