Every year around this time, millions tune into the Academy Awards® for what’s billed as the “Biggest Night in Showbiz.”  Hollywood A-listers like Scorsese, Spielberg and Streep accept accolades from center stage while their contemporaries in the front rows applaud with varying degrees of sincerity.  Regardless of who wins, we already know they’ll all remain fixtures in the world of entertainment, making headlines, movies and millions for years to come.  But somewhere beyond their designer duds, a couple of rows back and off-camera, sit a group of nominees nervously wringing their hands and dabbing their foreheads.  They’re storytellers just the same, but unaccustomed to all of the glitz and glamour, having lead quiet lives focused on the art of frame-by-frame filmmaking.  They are the few, the humble, the Animators…and for the better part of the Awards’ 85-year history, they only stood to have their work recognized in one category: Best Animated Short.

Thankfully, a little recognition goes a long way.

Will Vinton

A filmmaker by the name of Will Vinton was only a few years out of University when his collaborations with clay animator Bob Gardiner lead to the creation of an eight-minute short that would ultimately expand the scope of what was possible in animation.  Closed Mondays, the tale of a drunkard wandering through an art gallery, won the duo an Oscar® in 1975 for its innovative exploration of the medium, in spite of having initially struggled to find an audience.  “We raced to get it done,” Vinton recalls, “and sent it to a local festival here in Portland, where it was rejected and not even selected for screening.  We thought it was really cool – we thought it was great, in fact – so we were crestfallen, but very soon after it won really major awards at Annecy and all around at international festivals.”  The film’s success bolstered Vinton’s confidence and “provided an opportunity for the growth of 3D animation.  I say that because you have to remember that was a time when 97% of animation was 2D cel animation, so 3D animation was a novelty.”  He founded Will Vinton Productions (later Will Vinton Studios) and further refined the art form through the production of numerous shorts, features and commercials.  His trademarked ‘Claymation’ remains part of the pop culture landscape thanks to the enduring popularity of the California Raisins and Emmy Award–winning specials like A Claymation Christmas Celebration.

His career is just one of the many shaped by the acclaim that comes with an Oscar statuette.  “I really respect the Academy for continuing to maintain and nurture this incredible run with the Shorts,” he says.  “Look at the people who have won the award for Best Animated Short over the years and its an amazing array of people who’ve gone on to do amazing things.  It’s clearly a terrific award for people getting their start.”

David Fine

Of course, David Fine was already well into his career with two nominations to his name before he struck Oscar gold in 1995.  “Each time we were nominated, it was unbelievable,” he remembers.  “The first time, it seemed unreal that this silly four minute student film could achieve that.  The second time was no less thrilling and the third time, was it ‘been there done that?’ Nope!  It's always a huge honor and thrill.”

His winning film, Bob’s Birthday, centered around a middle-aged British couple named Bob and Margaret Fish and the surprise birthday party their guests would never forget.  Fine and his wife and collaborator Alison Snowden found the characters so accessible and entertaining that the short quickly became the template for something greater.  “Because Bob's Birthday felt like it could be a series,” he explains, “[our win had] an immediate impact.  It really helped create interest for the series, which had actually already begun development before the Oscars.”  In 1998, Bob and Margaret debuted in the UK, exploring the duo’s on-going adventures and lasting a total of four seasons.  “It really can help lead to anything, including another short film, or as in our case, a TV series.”  In Fine’s experience, however, “features are a whole discipline in themselves and it doesn't follow that an amazing short film means certain feature success, but it can.  An animator might continue in shorts because they love the medium, which is more personal and unique than features.”

John Canemaker

They might also do a little bit of everything.  “My situation is somewhat different from others who have won in that I do not work full time as an animator or filmmaker, so the Oscar did not result in a studio job offer, nor was I seeking one,” states John Canemaker.  Prior to his win in 2006 for the biographical short The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation, he had already spent several decades “promoting animation around the world via teaching, speaking and screening my films.”  A tenured professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts since 1988 and head of the Animation Program, Canemaker has written no less than ten books and become one of the world’s foremost animation historians, lecturing at the Walt Disney Family Museum and New York’s Museum of Modern Art and regularly traveling the globe.  Still, he considers the nomination and lead-up to his eventual win “a truly wonderful moment in my life”, highlighted by AWN Publisher Ron Diamond’s Oscar Showcase Tour of the major studios in the Bay Area and Los Angeles prior to the big night.

Gene Deitch

While Canemaker’s Academy Award victory saw him taking trips and making connections, Gene Deitch’s success ultimately helped him settle in one place.  “I had never given a thought to remaining here,” the 88-year-old explains of his 1959 move from the US to Prague to marry his wife Zdenka.  “I was getting some flak from my American colleagues for working in a Communist country, even though my reasons for doing so were in no way political.”  When his short Munro made history as the first non-US production to win in the category in 1961, opinions changed.  “Colleagues stopped worrying that I might be a Communist sympathizer and began asking me if they could come and work in Prague!”  Contracts came in quick succession, including a job directing Tom and Jerry cartoons for MGM, allowing the animator and his wife to work continuously in Prague right up until their retirement.  “All I can say is that we’ve always been satisfied and happy with our decision as we’ve never been out of work during the 52 years of drastic ups and downs [experienced by] animators in America.  I have undoubtedly missed out on the big-time Feature Animation boom and I sometimes feel a twinge of regret, as I’ve always been interested in wider technological advances beyond what was possible here,” he concedes.  “And yet, I have enjoyed the wide variety of short-form experimentation I managed to do.”