Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

The Academy Awards are given each year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS or the Academy) for the best films and achievements of the previous year. The Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is given each year for animated films. 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 made 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, which has happened eight times, otherwise there will only be three films on the shortlist. Additionally, eight eligible animated features must have been theatrically released in Los Angeles County within the calendar year for this category to be activated.

Animated films can be nominated for other categories, but have rarely been so; Beauty and the Beast (1991) was the first animated film ever nominated for Best Picture. Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010) also received Best Picture nominations after the Academy expanded the number of nominees from five to ten.

Waltz with Bashir (2008) is the only animated film ever nominated for Best Foreign Language Film (though it did not receive a nomination for Best Animated Feature). The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) and Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) are the only two animated films to ever be nominated for Best Visual Effects.

History
For much of the Academy Awards' history, AMPAS was resistant to the idea of a regular Oscar 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 creation of the award, only one animated film received a Best Picture nomination: 1991's Beauty and the Beast, also by Walt Disney Pictures.

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.

People in the animation industry and 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. Some members and fans have criticized the award, however, saying it is only intended to prevent animated films from having a chance of winning Best Picture. DreamWorks had advertised heavily during the holiday 2001 season for Shrek, but was disappointed when the rumored Best Picture nomination did not materialize, though it was nominated for and ended up winning the inaugural Best Animated Feature award.

The criticism of Best Animated Feature was particularly prominent at the 81st Academy Awards, in which WALL-E won the award but was not nominated for Best Picture, despite receiving widespread acclaim from critics and audiences and being generally considered one of the best films of 2008. This led to controversy over whether the film was deliberately snubbed of the nomination by the Academy. Film critic Peter Travers commented that "If there was ever a time where an animated feature deserved to be nominated for Best Picture, it's WALL-E." However, official Academy Award regulations state that any movie nominated for this category can still be nominated for Best Picture. There have been complaints that the Best Animated Feature award is held in unfairly low regard by Academy members with many members refusing to vote for films they consider mere children's fare beneath them, or letting their own children see the films and go with their opinions instead. The dominance of Disney and Pixar allegedly as a result of this bias is suggested to be injuring the credibility of the award.

In 2009, when the nominee slots for Best Picture were doubled to ten, Up was nominated for both Best Animated Feature and Best Picture at the 82nd Academy Awards, the first film to do so since the creation of the Animated Feature category. This feat was repeated the following year by Toy Story 3. Since 2010 onward, with the increasing competitiveness of the Animated Feature category, Pixar (a perennial nominee) did not receive nominations for several recent films considering the studio has released films of more mixed critical reaction and box office earnings, while Pixar's sister studio Disney Animation won their first three awards.

In 2010, the Academy enacted a new rule regarding the performance capture technique employed in films such as Disney's A Christmas Carol from Robert Zemeckis and The Adventures of Tintin from Steven Spielberg, 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 James Cameron's Avatar.

When the category was first instated, the nomination went to the person(s) most involved in creating the winning film. This could be the producer, the director, or both. For the 76th Academy Awards in 2004, only the director(s) of the film received the nomination. For the 86th Academy Awards ten years later, this was amended to include one producer and up to two directors.

Wins

 * 2 wins
 * Brad Bird
 * Pete Docter
 * Andrew Stanton
 * Lee Unkrich


 * 1 win
 * Chris Buck
 * Byron Howard
 * Hayao Miyazaki
 * Rich Moore
 * Chris Williams

Multiple nominations

 * 3 nominations
 * Ron Clements
 * Pete Docter
 * Hayao Miyazaki
 * Chris Sanders


 * 2 nominations
 * Brad Bird
 * Chris Buck
 * Tim Burton
 * Sylvain Chomet
 * Dean DeBlois
 * Byron Howard
 * Travis Knight
 * John Lasseter
 * Rich Moore
 * Tomm Moore
 * John Musker
 * Yoshiaki Nishimura
 * Andrew Stanton
 * Toshio Suzuki
 * Lee Unkrich
 * Chris Williams

Pixar

 * Monsters, Inc.
 * Finding Nemo
 * The Incredibles
 * Cars
 * Ratatouille
 * WALL-E
 * Up
 * Toy Story 3
 * Brave
 * Inside Out
 * Coco

Disney

 * Bolt
 * Wreck-It Ralph
 * Frozen
 * Big Hero 6
 * Zootopia
 * Moana

DreamWorks Animation SKG

 * Shrek
 * Shrek 2
 * Shark Tale
 * Kung Fu Panda
 * How to Train Your Dragon
 * Kung Fu Panda 2
 * Puss in Boots
 * The Croods
 * How to Train Your Dragon 2
 * The Boss Baby

Nickelodeon

 * Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
 * Rango

Blue Sky

 * Ice Age
 * Ferdinand

Sony Pictures Animation

 * Surf's Up

Other films

 * Monster House
 * Happy Feet
 * Despicable Me 2
 * Smallfoot

Aardman

 * Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
 * The Pirates! Band of Misfits
 * Shaun the Sheep Movie

Laika

 * Coraline
 * ParaNorman
 * The Boxtrolls
 * Kubo and the Two Strings

Tim Burton

 * Corpse Bride
 * Frankenweenie

Other films

 * Fantastic Mr. Fox
 * Anomalisa
 * My Life as a Zucchini

Disney

 * Lilo & Stitch
 * Treasure Planet
 * Brother Bear
 * The Princess and the Frog

Studio Ghibli

 * Spirited Away
 * Howl's Moving Castle
 * The Wind Rises
 * The Tale of the Princess Kaguya
 * When Marnie Was There
 * The Red Turtle (co-production)

Les Armateurs

 * The Triplets of Belleville
 * Ernest & Celestine

Cartoon Saloon

 * The Secret of Kells
 * Song of the Sea
 * The Breadwinner

Other films

 * Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
 * Persepolis
 * The Illusionist
 * Chico and Rita
 * A Cat in Paris
 * Boy and the World
 * Loving Vincent

Foreign language films
The Academy Awards have also nominated a number of non-English-language films.


 * Spirited Away (Japanese)
 * The Triplets of Belleville (French)
 * Howl's Moving Castle (Japanese)
 * Persepolis (French)
 * The Illusionist (French)
 * Chico and Rita (Spanish)
 * A Cat in Paris (French)
 * Ernest & Celestine (French)
 * The Wind Rises (Japanese)
 * The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Japanese)
 * Boy and the World (Portuguese)
 * When Marnie Was There (Japanese)
 * My Life as a Zucchini (French)

All the Japanese films on this list have also been released with English-language dubbing.