Search form

‘Floreana,’ ‘North of Blue’ Top LA Animation Festival

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 FestFloreana (USA) Louis Morton

Best FeatureNorth 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 PlaceTelling People You’re Native (USA) Joey Clift

Best Motion Graphics Equipoise (USA) Simo Liu

Best Motion Graphics 2nd PlaceA Logo Creation (Spain) Adolfo Ruiz

Best Motion Graphics 3rd PlaceThe 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 PlaceNew York City Sketchbook (USA) Willy Hartland

Best Documentary 2nd PlaceStory of Aishan (China) Hong Jia Bao

Best Documentary 3rd PlaceChangyou’s Journey (USA) Perry Chen

Best Character-Based 1st PlaceLittle Bandits (USA) Alex Avagimian

Best Character-Based 2nd Place Billie (UK) Maki Yoshikura

Best Character-Based 3rd PlaceDaisy (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 PlaceMedium Rare (USA) Luca Cioci

Best Music Video 1st PlaceEmulate-Okay Kaya (USA) Daniel Zvereff

Best Music Video 2nd PlaceCelebrating Mister Rogers (USA) Melissa Crowton, Olivia Huynh & Drew Hodges

Best Music Video 3rd PlaceSignal (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 StoryThe 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 PlaceDiving In A Sea Of Light (USA) Micah Buzan

Best Design 2nd PlaceSerph-Sparkle (Japan) Taro Otani

Best Design 3rd Place Carlotta’s Face (Germany) Valentin Riedl, Frédéric Schuld

Best Commercial 1st PlaceVoicing CSA: The Mouse (UK) Aaron Wood

Best Commercial 2nd PlaceThe Story of Our Workflow (Malaysia) Alex Safavinia

Best Horror Comedy Spider vs. the Living Dead (USA) Scott DaRos

Best Clay AnimationThe Mud (USA) Brandon Lake

Best Classic Animation StyleEmbraced (France) Justine Vuylsteker

Best Mixed Media AnimationThe Lineman (USA) Jay Shipman

Best Traditional 2D Animation Bad Tuna (USA) Deena Baum

Best CGI AnimationFinal_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 PlaceMi Abuelita (Guatemala) Giselle Pérez

Best Children’s Animation 2nd PlaceLimbo (USA) Jennifer Stachovic

Best Children’s Animation 3rd PlaceA Priori (France) Maïté Schmitt

Best Student ComedyBarry (USA) Anchi Shen

Best Student DirectionDescent (USA) Hailey Katelynn Marshall

Best Student Mixed Media AnimationRelation.Ship (USA) Zoey Lin

Best Student Stop Motion AnimationAll the Way Down (USA) Chun Chun Chang

Source: LAAF

Jennifer Wolfe's picture

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.