Pixar leads the Annie nominations

ASIFA-Hollywood has announced its nominations for this year's Annie Awards. These awards are given for achievements in animation in movies and television. This year, Pixar's two movies, Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur, have together racked up 25 nominations between them.

The nominations for Best Animated Feature include Inside Out, with further nominations in Animated Effects, two nominations in Character Animation, Character Design, Directing, Music, Production Design, two nominations in Storyboarding, two nominations in Voice Acting, Editorial and Writing; The Good Dinosaur, with further nominations in Animated Effects, two nominations in Character Design, Music, Production Design and three nominations in Storyboarding; Anomalisa (the only movie nominated for Best Animated Feature with no claim to furry), with further nominations in Directing, Music, Voice Acting and Editorial; The Peanuts Movie, with further nominations in Character Animation, Directing, and two nominations in Voice Acting; and Shaun the Sheep Movie, with further nominations in Directing, Production Design, Writing and Editorial.

For the first time, there is a secondary category for Best Animated Feature, Independent, which includes four nominees, The Boy and the Beast being the furriest. The name is somewhat inaccurate, as Anomalisa could definitely be considered "independent", while most of the nominees in the new category are studio based, if foreign language.

The Annie Nominations have long been a predictor of nominees for Best Animated Feature at the Oscars, though rarely with 100 percent match between the two organization's nominee lists. In the last few years, the nominee list at the Annies has featured more than five nominees; during that period, all Oscar nominees were first Annie nominees in Best Animated Feature. Those looking to predict the Oscar nominations would probably do best to limit their guesses to nominees in this year's two Best Animated Feature categories at the Annies.