Louis Morton’s ‘Floreana’ and Joanna Priestly’s ‘North of Blue’ win grand prizes; best comedy award goes to Alison Snowden and David Fine’s ‘Animal Behaviour.’
Joanna Priestly’s ‘North of Blue’ awarded top prize at the 2018 Los Angeles Animation Festival.
Prizes for this year’s newly-revived Los Angeles Animation Festival were handed out Sunday night at the Mayflower Club in North Hollywood, with the Best of Fest award going to Louis Morton’s Floreana, which also topped the experimental animation category, while Best Feature was awarded to Joanna Priestly’s North of Blue.
The award for Best Comedy went to Oscar-winning Canadian duo Alison Snowden and David Fine for Animal Behaviour. The couple won an Academy Award in 1992 for their animated short film Bob’s Birthday.
The festival also honored Evette Vargas for her pioneering work in VR, animator-composer Ed Skudder for his music video Tectonic, and animated documentary Land of the Free?, a group project from Sheila Sofian’s USC Documentary Animation class.
The award ceremony helped raise money and awareness for professional organization Women in Animation, with prizes for the main competition categories sponsored by animation software company Toon Boom.
The full list of winners for LAAF 2018 is shown below:
Best of the Fest – Floreana (USA) Louis Morton
Best Feature – North of Blue (USA) Joanna Priestly
Best Comedy 1st Place – Animal Behaviour (Canada) Alison Snowden & David Fine
Best Comedy 2nd Place – ‘F’ for Formula (USA) Santino Vitale
Best Comedy 3rd Place – Telling People You’re Native (USA) Joey Clift
Best Motion Graphics – Equipoise (USA) Simo Liu
Best Motion Graphics 2nd Place – A Logo Creation (Spain) Adolfo Ruiz
Best Motion Graphics 3rd Place – The Soul of a Circle (USA) Jonathan Lacocque
Best Short from a Series – Lullaby Theories: A Secret (USA) Jonathan Lacocque
Best Short from a Series 2nd Place – & Black & White (Croatia) Darko Bakliza
Best Documentary 1st Place – New York City Sketchbook (USA) Willy Hartland
Best Documentary 2nd Place – Story of Aishan (China) Hong Jia Bao
Best Documentary 3rd Place – Changyou’s Journey (USA) Perry Chen
Best Character-Based 1st Place – Little Bandits (USA) Alex Avagimian
Best Character-Based 2nd Place – Billie (UK) Maki Yoshikura
Best Character-Based 3rd Place – Daisy (USA) Yu Yu
Best Experimental 1st Place – Floreana (USA) Louis Morton
Best Experimental 2nd Place -The Elephant’s Song (USA) Lynn Tomlinson
Best Experimental 3rd Place – Medium Rare (USA) Luca Cioci
Best Music Video 1st Place – Emulate-Okay Kaya (USA) Daniel Zvereff
Best Music Video 2nd Place – Celebrating Mister Rogers (USA) Melissa Crowton, Olivia Huynh & Drew Hodges
Best Music Video 3rd Place – Signal (Republic of Korea) Hwang Ji Lee
Award of Excellence (Presented by Sangaria Ramune) – Tectonic (USA) Ed Skudder
Humanitarian Award – Land of the Free (USA)
USC Documentary Animation Production class: Alissa Michelle Brasington, Liam Campbell, Brian Cawley, Lakota DodgingHorse, Ken Egu, C. Leigh Goldsmith, Haley Hudkins, Hannah Kreiswirth, Kaitlyn Leewing, Sequoyah Madison, Molly Murphy, Patrice Pinardo, Chenglin Xie
Best Direction – Animal Behaviour (Canada) Alison Snowden & David Fine
Best Story – The Magical Mystery of Musigny (USA) John Meyer
Best Character Design – Happy Foot vs. Sad Foot (USA) Mike Hollingsworth
Best Art Direction – Unexpected Discoveries (USA) James Mabery
Best Design 1st Place – Diving In A Sea Of Light (USA) Micah Buzan
Best Design 2nd Place – Serph-Sparkle (Japan) Taro Otani
Best Design 3rd Place – Carlotta’s Face (Germany) Valentin Riedl, Frédéric Schuld
Best Commercial 1st Place – Voicing CSA: The Mouse (UK) Aaron Wood
Best Commercial 2nd Place – The Story of Our Workflow (Malaysia) Alex Safavinia
Best Horror Comedy – Spider vs. the Living Dead (USA) Scott DaRos
Best Clay Animation – The Mud (USA) Brandon Lake
Best Classic Animation Style – Embraced (France) Justine Vuylsteker
Best Mixed Media Animation – The Lineman (USA) Jay Shipman
Best Traditional 2D Animation – Bad Tuna (USA) Deena Baum
Best CGI Animation – Final_Final (Canada) Matt Greenwood
Best Illustrative Animation – The Backward Astronomer (UK) Jake Nelson
Best Cut-Out Animation – Concatenate (Canada) Simone Northey
Best Children’s Animation 1st Place – Mi Abuelita (Guatemala) Giselle Pérez
Best Children’s Animation 2nd Place – Limbo (USA) Jennifer Stachovic
Best Children’s Animation 3rd Place – A Priori (France) Maïté Schmitt
Best Student Comedy – Barry (USA) Anchi Shen
Best Student Direction – Descent (USA) Hailey Katelynn Marshall
Best Student Mixed Media Animation – Relation.Ship (USA) Zoey Lin
Best Student Stop Motion Animation – All the Way Down (USA) Chun Chun Chang
Source: LAAF
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
