Academy Award for Best Animated Feature

The Academy Awards are given each year by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) 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 given for films made in 2001.

Academy Award nominations and winners are chosen by the members of the AMPAS. If there are 16 or more films submitted for the category, the winner is voted from a shortlist of five films, which has happened six 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 to be nominated for Best Picture. Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010) also received Best Picture nominations after the Academy expanded the number of nominees. Waltz with Bashir (2008) is the only animated picture ever nominated for Best Foreign Language Film (though it failed to earn a nomination in the Best Animated Feature category). The category has been dominated by Pixar which has produced nine films which have been nominated and seven winners; the only two films they have produced since the category's inception to not be nominated in the category are Cars 2 and Monsters University.

Fifty-four films have been nominated to date.

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 Dwarves in 1938 and the Academy Special Achievement 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, 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 less 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. This criticism was particularly prominent at the 81st Academy Awards, in which WALL-E won the award but was not nominated for Best Picture, despite receiving overwhelmingly positive reviews from critics and moviegoers 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.

In 2009 when the nominee slots for Best Picture were doubled to 10, 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. 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: The Secret of the Unicorn 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 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 in 2014, this was amended to include one producer along with up to two directors.

Pixar

 * Monsters
 * Finding Nemo
 * The Incredibles
 * Cars
 * Ratatouille
 * WALL-E
 * Up
 * Toy Story 3
 * Brave

DreamWorks

 * Shrek
 * Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
 * 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

Disney

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

Paramount Pictures/Nickelodeon Movies

 * Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius
 * Rango

Other films

 * Ice Age
 * Happy Feet
 * Monster House
 * Surf's Up
 * Despicable Me 2

Aardman animations

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

Tim Burton Productions

 * Corpse Bride
 * Frankenweenie

Laika

 * Corpse Bride
 * Coraline
 * ParaNorman
 * The Boxtrolls

Other films

 * Fantastic Mr. Fox

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

Cartoon Saloon

 * The Secret of Kells
 * Song of the Sea

Folimage

 * A Cat in Paris
 * Ernest and Celestine

Django Films

 * The Triplets of Belleville
 * The Illusionist

Other Films

 * Chico and Rita
 * Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron

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)
 * A Cat in Paris (French)
 * Chico and Rita (Spanish)
 * Ernest & Celestine (French)
 * The Wind Rises (Japanese)
 * The Tale of the Princess Kaguya (Japanese)

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