Aardman Animations has scooped up a brace of awards at the eighth British Animation Awards held last night at the BFI Southbank. The world-renowned studio, home of megastars Wallace and Gromit, picked up the Children’s Choice Award for A Matter of Loaf and Death, and the Best Children’s Series for Shaun the Sheep.
Hosted by animator-turned-comedienne Caroline Mabey, the bi-annual British Animation Awards honour the finest in British and European animation. Major winners this year include the Oscar nominated The Secret of Kells which landed the Best European Feature Award, Astley Baker Davies who took the Best Preschool Award for Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom and Studio A.K.A who won the Best Animated Special for Lost and Found.
British animator Stephen Irwin was also a double winner, receiving BAAs for his film The Black Dog’s Progress (below), which snapped up Best Short and Best Sound.
Passion Pictures took three awards for New Media Best Commissioned Animation for Harmonix: The Beatles Rock Band - Intro and the Audi Q5:Unboxed ad picked up two gongs taking Best Commercial: Direction and Best Commercial: Craft.
The Public Choice Awards are a vital part of the ceremony and are the only awards to be voted for by members of the public. Screenings were held in 27 different venues across the country with the audience voting for their favourites.
The public nominated two films from Partizan as their favourites and the production company waltzed away with two of the three Public Choice awards: Best Music Video for Rex the Dog: Bubbilicious and Best Commercial category for Cadbury Creme Egg Mousetrap.
The final Public Choice category Favourite Short Film was awarded to This Way Up, an amusing film which followed the work of two undertakers.
Other winners on the night included Flogging Molly’s Float, which landed the Best Music Video prize; Philip Bacon who took the Best Student Film for his National Film & Television School graduation film Yellow Belly End; The Robin title sequence for the Holland Animation Film Festival which hopped away with the BAA for Best Film/TV Graphics: and The Violent Highway which won Best Applied Animation.
In place of a statuette, all the winners of this year’s BAAs took home a unique artwork created specially for the occasion by a range of leading international and UK animation artists. In recognition of the awards’ acronym, the artworks had to feature one or more sheep, with the option for a visual reference to the UK and/or animation.
A DVD the Best of the British Animation Awards Vol VIII is available on sale from the British Animation Awards website.
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