2021 Annie Awards winners: ‘Soul’ and ‘Wolfwalkers’ dominate

Disney/Pixar’s Soul and Apple/Cartoon Saloon’s Wolfwalkers dominated the 2021 Annie Awards on Friday, winning seven and five awards, respectively. Each film won a top feature prize with Tomm Moore & Ross Stewart winning feature directing for Wolfwalkers and Pete Docter, Mike Jones & Kemp Powers winning writing for Soul.

Soul also picked up music, vfx, storyboarding and feature editing wins while Wolfwalkers took voice acting for Eva Whittaker and character design.

For television, Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal (Plague of Madness) won directing, Andrew Goldberg & Patti Harrison won writing for Big Mouth and voice acting went to David Bradley who plays Merlin in Tales of Arcadia: Wizards (Our Final Act). The top TV winner of the night was the Netflix series Hilda, which took home awards for TV/Media for Children, character animation (David Laliberté) and editorial (John McKinnon).

Here is the full list of winners from the 48th Annie Awards.

Feature: Soul
Indie Feature: Wolfwalkers

TV/Media – General Audience: Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal (Coven of the Damned)
TV/Media – Children: Hilda (Chapter 9: The Deerfox)
TV/Media – Preschool: The Adventures of Paddington (Paddington Digs a Tunnel to Peru)

Direction – Feature: Tomm Moore & Ross Stewart – Wolfwalkers
Direction – TV/Media: Genndy Tartakovsky – Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal (Plague of Madness)

Writing – Feature: Soul – Pete Docter, Mike Jones & Kemp Powers
Writing – TV/Media: Big Mouth (The New Me) – Andrew Goldberg & Patti Harrison

Voice Acting – Feature: Eva Whittaker (Mebh Óg MacTíre) – Wolfwalkers
Voice Acting – TV/Media: David Bradley (Merlin) – Tales of Arcadia: Wizards (Our Final Act)

Editorial – Feature: Soul – Kevin Nolting, Gregory Amundson, Robert Grahamjones & Amera Rizk
Editorial – TV/Media: Hilda (Chapter 9: The Deerfox) – John McKinnon

VFX – Feature: Soul – Tolga Göktekin, Carl Kaphan, Hiroaki Narita, Enrique Vila & Kylie Wijsmuller
VFX – TV/Media: Jurassic World: Camp Cretaceous (Welcome to Jurassic World) – Emad Khalili, Ivan Wang, Chris Wombold, Kyle Goertz & Kathy D. Tran

Music – Feature: Soul – Trent Reznor, Atticus Ross & Jon Batiste
Music – TV/Media: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Victory and Death) – Kevin Kiner

Production Design – Feature: Wolfwalkers – María Pareja, Ross Stewart & Tomm Moore
Production Design – TV/Media: Shooom’s Odyssey – Julien Bisaro

Storyboarding – Feature: Soul – Trevor Jimenez
Storyboarding – TV/Media: Looney Tunes Cartoons – Andrew Dickman

Character Animation – Feature: Soul – Michal Makarewicz
Character Animation – TV/Media: Hilda – David Laliberté
Character Animation – Live Action: The Mandalorian – Nathan Fitzgerald, Leo Ito, Chris Rogers, Eung Ho Lo & Emily Luk
Character Animation – Video Game: Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales – Brian Wyser, Michael Yosh, Danny Garnett & David Hancock

Character Design – Feature: Wolfwalkers – Federico Pirovano
Character Design – TV/Media: Amphibia (The Shut-In!) – Joe Sparrow

Sponsored Production: There’s a Monster in My Kitchen
Special Production: The Snail and the Whale
Short Subject: Souvenir Souvenir
Student Film: La Bestia

Winsor McCay Award: Sue Nichols
Winsor McCay Award: Bruce Smith
Winsor McCay Award: Willie Ito
Special Achievement in Animation: Howard (Don Hahn, director)
Ub Iwerks Award: Epic Games’ Unreal Engine
June Foray Award: Daisuke ‘Dice’ Tsutsumi

Images courtesy of Walt Disney/Pixar and Apple TV+/Cartoon Saloon

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Erik Anderson

Erik Anderson is the founder/owner and Editor-in-Chief of AwardsWatch and has always loved all things Oscar, having watched the Academy Awards since he was in single digits; making lists, rankings and predictions throughout the show. This led him down the path to obsessing about awards. Much later, he found himself in film school and the film forums of GoldDerby, and then migrated over to the former Oscarwatch (now AwardsDaily), before breaking off to create AwardsWatch in 2013.

He is a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, accredited by the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival and more, is a member of the International Cinephile Society (ICS), The Society of LGBTQ Entertainment Critics (GALECA), Hollywood Critics Association (HCA) and the International Press Academy. Among his many achieved goals with AwardsWatch, he has given a platform to underrepresented writers and critics and supplied them with access to film festivals and the industry and calls the Bay Area his home where he lives with his husband and son.

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