ICE AGE, LILO AND STITCH, THE WILD THORNBERRYS MOVIE and SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON received nominations in both best sound editing and music in animated features from the Motion Picture Sound Editors, which will present its Golden Reel Awards at the Century Plaza Hotel March 22 during the group's 50th annual awards banquet. TV series CSI, FASTLANE, JOHN DOE and SPONGEBOB SQUAREPANTS took two noms each as well.

And the nominees are…

Best Sound Editing In Domestic Features: Sound Effects/Foley

The Writers Guild has announced the nominees for the 55th Annual Writers Guild Awards. For the first time this year, all animated programs (long form original, long form adaptation, specials and episodic) are competing in the new television animation category. Animation programming scripted by WGA members was previously submitted under the appropriate category (i.e. 30-minute comedy, hour-long drama).

Imagina.03, the international festival for digital images, handed out its annual awards on February 5, 2003 at a ceremony in Monaco's Grimaldi Forum. Sony Pictures Imageworks had a big night, winning awards for best direction for the short film THE CHUBBCHUBBS, directed by Eric Armstrong, and taking home best feature honors for STUART LITTLE 2. 2003 was the first year Imagina has presented a best feature film prize, and it was awarded to the feature film that had the most effective use of digital technology.

Hayao Miyazaki's SPIRITED AWAY won top honors at the 30th Annual Annie Awards ceremony, taking home awards for best feature film, writing, music and direction. SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON also ran off with major awards in the categories of character design, effects animation, production design and storyboarding.

The 20th Annual Sundance Film Festival wrapped up on January 26, 2003 after announcing the festival winners. Animation was represented in the Dramatic Grand Jury Prize winner AMERICAN SPLENDOR, directed by Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini. AMERICAN SPLENDOR tells the story of comic artist Harvey Pekar using documentary footage mixed with narrative live-action and animation created by Gary Leib and John Kuramoto of the New York-based design and animation company Twinkle.

On Friday, January 17, 2003 the 2002 Critics' Choice Awards were bestowed by the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA) to honor the finest in cinematic achievement. This year, the Critics' Choice Awards were notable because the BFCA added a category for Best Digital Acting Performance. While controversial, the award honored the standout digital characters that appeared in some of 2002's biggest blockbusters, with Gollum from LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS winning the award, beating Yoda from STAR WARS: EPISODE II and Dobby from HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS.

THE LORD OF THE RINGS: THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING picked up five awards at the third annual DVD Premiere Awards, including the award for Best Overall New Extra Features in a New Release.

Comedian and writer Steve Marmel will host the 30th Annual Annie Awards. Marmel, who is nominated at this year's Annie's for his work on THE FAIRLY ODDPARENTS (Outstanding Achievement for Music in an Animated Television Program), where he serves as a writer and story editor, has had a 15-year career as a stand-up comedian, including a one man show for HBO and appearances on COMEDY CENTRAL, THE TONIGHT SHOW with Jay Leno and POLITICALLY INCORRECT with Bill Maher.

And the nominees are...

Best Visual Effects in an Effects Driven Motion Picture



MEN IN BLACK II
John Berton, Tom Bertino


STAR WARS: EPISODE II ATTACK OF THE CLONES
John Knoll, Ben Snow, Pablo Helman, Rob Coleman


LORD OF THE RINGS: THE TWO TOWERS
Jim Rygiel, Joe Letteri, Randall Cook, Alex Funke




Best Supporting Visual Effects in a Motion Pictures



GANGS OF NEW YORK
Michael Owens, Camille Geier, Edward Hirsh, Jon Alexander

The Visual Effects Society, an organization comprised of visual effects professionals who desire to honor, advance and promote visual effects for its membership and the industry as a whole, has announced the nominees for its 1st Annual VES Awards.

Middle-Earth and the Men in Black made the short list, as did the clone army and the Quidditch team. The nominees for 2002's Best Visual Effects will be culled from a short list of feature films with primary visual effects from Digital Domain, ILM, Sony Pictures Imageworks and Weta Digital. Worthy of noting – all the films on the short list made over $100 million in U.S. theatrical release, with four of the films topping $200 million. Fifteen-minute clip reels from each of the seven films will be screened for the Visual Effects Award Nominating Committee on February 5, 2003.

ASIFA-Hollywood has announced nominations for the 30th Annual Annie Awards. Honoring outstanding achievement in animation, this year's twenty-two categories recognize feature films, television programming, commercials, home videos and special projects in categories ranging from directing, writing and voice acting to production design, storyboarding and music.

The winners of the Academy Awards for Scientific and Technical achievements for the year 2002 have been announced and Alias|Wavefront will receive an Oscar for Maya, its 3D animation, modeling and rendering production tool. Maya is widely used in feature films that incorporate 3D visual effects and animation, and was employed extensively in such films as SPIDER-MAN, ICE AGE, HOLLOW MAN and THE PERFECT STORM.

Here is the full list of the nominees for the 30th Annual Annie Awards.

Outstanding Achievement in an Animated Home Video Production

LAND BEFORE TIME: JOURNEY TO BIG WATER Universal Cartoon Studios

ROLIE POLIE OLIE: THE GREAT DEFENDER OF FUN A Nelvana Limited/Sparkling* Co-Production

VEGGIETALES: THE STAR OF CHRISTMAS Big Idea Productions



Outstanding Achievement in an Animated Short Subject

NIGHT OF THE LIVING DOO Cartoon Network

THE GROOVENIANS Cartoon Network Studios

Presented by GAME DEVELOPER magazine, the fifth annual Front Line Awards recognize those software and hardware companies whose tools enable faster and more efficient game creation for advancing the state of the art. Discreet's 3ds max 5 software received the "Front Line Award" in the art category, along with Adobe's Photoshop 7 and AI Implant from BioGraphic Technologies. The art award is based on selective criteria including utility, innovation, value and ease of use.

For the first time a critics group has singled out digital characters with their own awards category. The Critics' Choice Awards are bestowed by the Broadcast Film Critics Association to honor the finest in cinematic achievement. Since 2002 had so many strong CG characters, the group has added the category of Best Digital Acting, with THE LORD OF THE RINGS' Gollum competing against HARRY POTTER's house elf Dobby and STAR WARS: EPISODE II's light-saber wielding Yoda. For Best Animated Feature, the nominees are ICE AGE, LILO AND STITCH, SPIRIT: STALLION OF THE CIMARRON and SPIRITED AWAY.

Everyone's favorite dysfunctional family got the nod from the Hollywood Foreign Press for the first time. On December 19, 2002, the nominees for the 60th annual Golden Globe Awards were announced, and FOX's THE SIMPSONS is the only animated entry nominated for Best Television Series - Musical or Comedy. It is joined in this category by the live-action comedy series HBO's CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM and SEX AND THE CITY and NBC's FRIENDS and WILL & GRACE. While THE SIMPSONS is a nine time Emmy Award winner for Best Animated Series, this is the first time The Golden Globes have acknowledged the show.

Film Roman's LEVEL13.NET has announced the winners of its second annual DIRECTV LEVEL13.NET ANIMATED FILM FESTIVAL. The film festival competition was open to working artists, emerging animators and student filmmakers. Hundreds of submissions were taken from April 2002 to July 2002 and the winners were chosen in three categories: 2D Animation, 3D/Experimental Animation and Student Work.

For the first time ever an animated film has been awarded the Grand Prix at Siena. Suzie Templeton's heart-breaking puppet-animation short DOG notched up another win at the 2002 edition of the International Short Film Festival Siena in Italy. DOG was Templeton's MA graduation film at The Royal College of Art in England. It has received numerous international awards including the Hiroshima Prize 2002, the Holland Animation Festival Narrative Grand Prix 2002, the British Animation Awards Paul Berry Award 2002 and the BAFTA for Short Animation 2002.

Hong Kong-based STVDIO Media Animation was awarded First Prize in both SuperPitch competitions at the Asia Television Forum and Asia Animation Conference, held in Singapore from December 2 – 5, 2002. Television producers from around Asia submitted original programming ideas to the pitching competitions. Out of 217 submissions, six were shortlisted for the general SuperPitch on December 2, and six for the Animation SuperPitch on December 5.