The International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood, announced the winners of its 47th Annual Annie Awards™ at a ceremony on January 25.

There are 32 categories spanning features, TV/shortform media and VR, recognizing the year’s best in the field of animation.

Love, Death & Robots won four Annies, including Best Editorial – TV/Media for the episode based on John Scalzi’s short “Alternate Histories.”

Klaus, Sergio Pablos’ Santa Claus origin story and the first original animated motion picture out of Netflix, dominated the evening with seven wins.

Best Feature

• Klaus, Netflix Presents A Production of The Spa Studios and Atresmedia Cine

Best Indie Feature

• I Lost My Body, Xilam for Netflix

Best Special Production

• How to Train Your Dragon Homecoming, DreamWorks Animation

Best Short Subject

• Uncle Thomas: Accounting for the Days, Ciclope Filmes, National Film Board of Canada, Les Armateurs

Best VR

• Bonfire, Baobab Studios

Best Commercial

• The Mystical Journey of Jimmy Page’s ‘59 Telecaster, Nexus Studios

Best TV/Media — Preschool

• Ask the Storybots, Episode: “Why Do We Have To Recycle?,” JibJab Bros. Studios for Netflix

Best TV/Media — Children

• Disney Mickey Mouse, Episode: “Carried Away,” Disney TV Animation/Disney Channel

Best TV/Media — General Audience

• BoJack Horseman, Episode: “The Client,” Tornante Productions, LLC for Netflix

Best Student Film

• The Fox & the Pigeon, Michelle Chua

Best FX for TV/Media

Love, Death & Robots, Episode: “The Secret War,” Blur for Netflix

• FX Artist: Viktor Németh
• FX Artist: Szabolcs Illés
• FX Artist: Ádám Sipos
• FX Artist: Vladimir Zhovna

Best FX for Feature

Frozen 2, Walt Disney Animation Studios

• Benjamin Fiske: Benjamin Fiske
• Alex Moaveni: Alex Moaveni
• Jesse Erickson: Jesse Erickson
• Dimitre Berberov: Dimitre Berberov
• Kee Nam Suong: Kee Nam Suong

Best Character Animation — TV/Media

His Dark Materials, Episode: “8,” BBC Studios

• Lead Animator: Aulo Licinio Character: Iroek

Best Character Animation — Animated Feature

Klaus, Netflix Presents A Production of The Spa Studios and Atresmedia Cine

• Animation Supervisor: Sergio Martins
• Character: Alva

Best Character Animation — Live Action

Avengers: Endgame, Weta Digital

• Animation Supervisor: Sidney Kombo-Kintombo

Best Character Animation — Video Game

Unruly Heroes, Magic Design Studios

• Character Animator: Sebastien Parodi
• Character: Heroes Kid version, Underworld NPC
• Lead Animator: Nicolas Leger
  Character: Heroes (Wukong, Kihong, Sandmonk, Sanzang), All enemies (except Underworld levels) and cinematics

Best Character Design — TV/Media

Carmen Sandiego, Episode: “The Chasing Paper Caper,” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing and DHX Media for Netflix

• Character Designer: Keiko Murayama
• Character: Carmen Sandiego, Paper Star, Player, Shadowsan, Chief, Julia Argent, Chase Devineaux

Best Character Design — Feature

Klaus, Netflix Presents A Production of The Spa Studios and Atresmedia Cine

• Character Designer: Torsten Schrank
• Character: All Characters

Best Direction — TV/Media

Disney Mickey Mouse

• Episode: For Whom the Booth Tolls
• Disney TV Animation/Disney Channel
• Director: Alonso Ramirez Ramos

Best Direction — Feature

Klaus, Netflix Presents A Production of The Spa Studios and Atresmedia Cine

• Director: Sergio Pablos

Best Music — TV/Media

Love, Death & Robots, Episode: “Sonnie’s Edge”

• Blur for Netflix
• Composer/Lyricist: Rob Cairns

Best Music — Feature

I Lost My Body, Xilam for Netflix

• Composer: Dan Levy

Best Production Design — TV/Media

Love, Death & Robots, Episode: “The Witness,” Blur for Netflix

• Production Design: Alberto Mielgo

Best Production Design — Feature

Klaus, Netflix Presents A Production of The Spa Studios and Atresmedia Cine

• Production Design: Szymon Biernaki
• Production Design: Marcin Jakubowski

Best Storyboarding — TV/Media

Carmen Sandiego, Episode: “Becoming Carmen Sandiego: Part 1,” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing and DHX Media for Netflix

• Storyboard Artist: Kenny Park

Best Storyboarding — Feature

Klaus, Netflix Presents A Production of The Spa Studios and Atresmedia Cine

• Storyboard Artist: Sergio Pablos

Best Voice Acting — TV/Media

Bob’s Burgers, Episode: “Roamin’ Bob-iday,” 20th Century Fox / Bento Box Entertainment

• Cast: H. Jon Benjamin Character: Bob

Best Voice Acting — Feature

Frozen 2, Walt Disney Animation Studios

• Josh Gad: Josh Gad 
• Character: Olaf

Best Writing — TV/Media

Tuca & Bertie, Episode: “The Jelly Lakes,” Tornante Productions, LLC for Netflix

• Writer: Shauna McGarry

Best Writing — Feature

I Lost My Body, Xilam for Netflix

• Writer: Jérémy Clapin
• Writer: Guillaume Laurant

Best Editorial — TV/Media

Love, Death & Robots, Episode: “Alternate Histories,” Blur for Netflix

• Nominee: Bo Juhl
• Nominee: Stacy Auckland
• Nominee: Valerian Zamel

Best Editorial — Feature

Klaus, Netflix Presents A Production of The Spa Studios and Atresmedia Cine

• Nominee: Pablo García Revert

The following juried awards were also presented:

Winsor McCay Award  for their exemplary industry careers —

• Satoshi Kon (posthumously), Japanese film director, animator, screenwriter and manga artist;
• Henry Selick, stop motion director, producer and writer who is best known for directing the stop-motion animation films The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Coraline; and
• Ron Clements & John Musker, animators, animation directors, screenwriters and producers of one of the Walt Disney Animation Studio’s leading director teams.

The June Foray Award —

• Jeanette Bonds, writer, independent animator, and co-founder and director of GLAS Animation; and

The Ub Iwerks Award —

• Jim Blinn, computer scientist who first became widely known for his work as a computer graphics expert at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), particularly his work on the pre-encounter animations for the Voyager project.

The Going Under Fan Fund (GUFF) ballot for the 2020 race is now available online.

Voters will choose a European delegate to attend to CoNZealand in Wellington, NZ (July 29-August 2).

The six candidates are: Cora Buhlert (Germany); Hisham El-Far and Lee Fletcher (UK); Hanna Hakkarainen (Finland); Elizabeth Jones and Claire Rousseau (UK); Dave Lally (UK); Alison Scott (UK).

Ballots will be accepted until April 13. The candidates’ platforms, general information about voting, and the online ballot can be found here. A PDF ballot for printing is also available. Votes are not valid unless accompanied by a contribution of at least GBP6, EUR7, AUD10, NZD10, or an equivalent amount in other currencies. See the ballot for full rules and payment options.

GUFF, the Get Up-and-over Fan Fund or the Going Under Fan Fund, depending on which direction it’s running, exists to provide funds to enable well-known fans from Australasia and Europe to visit each other’s national (or other) conventions and get to know each other’s fandoms better.

The winner(s) will take over the administration of the fund for the next northbound and southbound races.

Here are the candidates’ platforms and nominators:

Cora Buhlert (Germany)

Cora Buhlert is a writer, teacher, translator, crafter and lifelong SFF fan from Bremen, Germany. She writes for the Hugo-nominated fanzine Galactic Journey, co-runs the Speculative Fiction Showcase, a blog focussed on self-published and small press SFF, and recently created the 1945 Retro Hugo recommendation spreadsheet to help nominators. At her personal blog, she writes long rambling posts about science fiction, fantasy, media and whatever else comes to mind, including her adventures at the 2017 and 2019 WorldCons, where she was a panellist and volunteer. She’d love to have some adventures at CoNZealand to share as well.

Nominators: Camestros Felapton, Jo Van Ekeren (Australasia), Adrienne Joy, Kári Tulinius, Mark Yon (Europe)

Hisham El-Far and Lee Fletcher (UK)

Lee and Hisham met at a con in 2004, became best friends and partners in geekery, and have attended (and worked) DragonCons, Eastercons, Worldcons, Nineworlds and many more! They tweet, meet, and squee IRL about books, cosplay, and all things nerdy. In 2019 Lee opened The Portal Bookshop, an LGBT+ and diverse SFF specialist – now they push the best books at people for a living. Hisham helps! They can’t wait to explore NZ, nerd out with awesome new people, connect across continents, and document (and live-tweet) a riotous, excitable adventure to help fans everywhere vicariously get their geek on.

Nominators: Thoraiya Dyer, Abigail Nathan (Australasia), Matt Cavanagh, Joanne Harris, Alasdair Stuart (Europe)

Hanna Hakkarainen (Finland)

An efficient HR-person by day and an enthusiastic Fan by nature, Hanna is the way you spell “fandom” in Finnish. Hanna has organized cons of all sizes, from hundred-member Åcons, Finncons for thousands to Worldcon 75. She would love to go to New Zealand and Australia, chat with new friends until the various marsupials come home, and bring new ways to fandom from the Antipodes back home. Hanna loves to read, binge media, share bad memes and conjure culinary delights for friends and family. She never misses an opportunity to meet people and enjoy new activities, so bring on ConZealand!

Nominators: Sarah Lee Parker, PRK (Australasia), Phil Dyson, Jukka Halme, Mihaela Marija Perkovi? (Europe)

Elizabeth Jones and Claire Rousseau (UK)

We’ve both been involved in conventions since 2014, having volunteered at LonCon3, WorldCon75, Dublin2019, BristolCon and NineWorlds, doing front of house, exhibits, social media, programming and speaking on panels. We’re also both involved in fandom through BookTube, the bookish part of YouTube. There we discuss science fiction, fantasy and fandom (Claire’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/ClaireRousseau, Elizabeth’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/booksandpieces). Attending ConZealand is an opportunity to meet fellow fans from across the globe and to document and celebrate this amazing fandom with a series of videos about WorldCon and the fans that make it.

Nominators: Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Tansy Rayner Roberts (Australasia), Aliette de Bodard, Esther MacCallum-Stewart, Nicholas Whyte (Europe)

Dave Lally (UK)

Well known in UK, Ireland and Europe.
Active since his 1st UK Eastercon/Eurocon-Seacon 84/Brighton.
Video progs for (a) Worldcons: The Hague 1990 (Confiction), Glasgow 1995 (Intersection) and 2005 (Interaction), (b) most Eastercons : 1991-2005 and (c) many Octocons (IrishNatSFCons).
2006-2013: Chair ESFS (European SF Society-Eurocon’s home).
Since 2014: Membership Officer-British SF Association.
2016: Eastercon (Mancunicon) Committee.
Expertise “The Prisoner” (TV: 1967) and “The Wicker Man” (film: 1973).
Conventions are fandom’s lifeblood : not just the interaction of fen with the GoHs, but fen with
each other.
Financial services: retired. Irish National. London resident.

Nominators: Perry Middlemiss, John Toon (Australasia), Kin-Ming Looi, Mali Perera, Bridget Wilkinson (Europe)

Alison Scott (UK)

I’ve been attending conventions since 1984 and running them since 1986, including chairing Eastercons and curating fan spaces at UK Worldcons.
I write and illustrate fanzines, winning the Hugo for Plokta and the Rotsler and Nova for fan art. I helped edit the Aussiecon 4 at-con newsletter remotely while the convention slept.
I enjoy conventions mightily; I stay up late, meet new people, and have many passions, including fan funds, fundraising, and trip reports.
Through fandom I’ve grown to know many Australasian fans and would relish the chance to learn first-hand about their local fan groups and activities.

Nominators: Sue Ann Barber, Damien Warman (Australasia), Johan Anglemark, Sue Mason, Mark Plummer (Europe)

Compiled by Cat Eldridge:

Born December 25, 1928 — Dick Miller. He’s appeared in over a hundred films including every film directed by Dante. You’ve seen him in both Gremlins, The Little Shop of Horrors, Terminator, The Howling, Small Soldiers, Twilight Zone: The Movie, Amazon Women on the Moon, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm where he voiced the gravelly voiced Chuckie Sol, and Oberon in the excellent  “The Ties That Bind” episode of Justice League Unlimited. (Died 2019.)

Born December 25, 1939 — Royce D. Applegate.  His best known role was that of Chief Petty Officer Manilow Crocker on the first season of seaQuest DSV. He’s got appearances in Quantum Leap, Twin Peaks (where he played Rev. Clarence Brocklehurst), Tales of the Unexpected and Supertrain. (Died 2003.)

Born December 25, 1945 — Rick Berman, 74. Loved and loathed in equaled measures, he’s known for his work as the executive producer of Next Gen, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and Enterprise which he co-created with Brannon Braga. He’d be lead producer on the four Next Generation films: Generations, First Contact (which I like), Insurrection and Nemesis. 

Born December 25, 1952 — CCH Pounder, 67. She’s had one very juicy voice role running through the DC Universe from since Justice League Unlimited in 2006. If you’ve not heard her do this role, it worth seeing the animated Assault on Arkham Asylum which is far superior to the live action Suicide Squad film to hear her character. She also had a recurring role as Mrs. Irene Frederic on Warehouse 13 as well. She’s also been in X-Files, Quantum Leap, White Dwarf (horrid series), Gargoyles, Millennium, House of Frankenstein and Outer Limits,  Film wise, she shows up in Robocop 3, Tales from the Crypt presents Demon Knight, The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones and several of the forthcoming Avatar films.

Born December 25, 1984 — Georgia Moffett, 35. She’s the daughter of actor Peter Davison, the man who was Fifth Doctor, and she’s married to David Tennant who was the Tenth Doctor.  She played opposite the Tenth Doctor as Jenny in “The Doctor’s Daughter” and in she voiced ‘Cassie’ in the animated Doctor Who: Dreamland which is now on iTunes and Amazon. And yes, she’s in The Five(ish) Doctors Reboot as herself.

Trans-Atlantic Fan Fund administrators Johan Anglemark and Geri Sullivan have published the first issue of their joint TAFF newsletter, TAFFish, bringing you —

• Interviews with Michael Lowrey and Ann Totusek, the candidates in the current TAFF race,
• A report from the Dublin 2019 fan fund auction, by Johan
• Highlights from the first half of Geri’s TAFF trip this past summer
• A brief overview of TAFF finances

Download a copy here [PDF file.]

Ad campaigns for genre TV and movies dominated the Clio Entertainment Awards presentation on November 22 as Joker, Us, Game of Thrones and Legion all won big.

The jury for the award which recognizes entertainment marketing campaigns included Amazon Studios’ Mike Benson, WarnerMedia’s Chris Spadaccini, Twitch’s John Koller, Cirque du Soleil’s Kristina Heney, Warner Bros. Pictures’ Massey Rafani and others.

A partial list of winners follows. The full list, along with other key information, can be found here.

Games: Innovation

• GRAND WINNER: Changing the Game (Microsoft)

Games: Key Art

• GRAND WINNER Key Art – Multi-use, Borderlands 3

Games: Original Content

• BRONZE WINNER: Visit Xbox: the birth of gaming tourism (Microsoft Xbox One X Enhanced)
• BRONZE WINNER: Video Game Weapon Prank (Warframe)
• BRONZE WINNER: Lego Ultimate Unboxing (Microsoft Xbox)

Games: Public Relations

• GRAND WINNER: Changing the Game, (Microsoft)

Home Entertainment: Audio/Visual Mixed Campaign

• GRAND WINNER: Bohemian Rhapsody Home Entertainment Campaign for Bohemian Rhapsody, (Mob Scene)

Home Entertainment: Original Content

• GRAND WINNER: The Predator Holiday Special for The Predator (2018), (Stoopid Buddy Stoodios)

Home Entertainment: Packaging

• GRAND WINNER: The Big Lebowski

Home Entertainment: Social Media

• GOLD WINNER: Christmas Movie? Confirmed! Die Hard
• GOLD WINNER Bohemian Rhapsody – Unboxing Bohemian Rhapsody, (Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment)

Television/Streaming: Brand & Program Identity

• GOLD WINNER: FCC Loopholes (Viceland)
• GOLD WINNER: FXX Boots (FX Networks)
• GOLD WINNER: Opening Credits The Romanoffs
• GOLD WINNER: FXX Double Trouble (FX Networks)
• GOLD WINNER: Make a Little Trouble (HBO)

Television/Streaming: Experiential/Events

• GRAND WINNER: Maisel Day for Amazon Prime Video, (Amazon Prime Video)

Television/Streaming: Integrated Campaign

• GRAND WINNER: Game of Thrones – For the Throne Integrated (HBO)

Television/Streaming: Out of Home

• GRAND WINNER: Legion – Wild Post (Legion – Season 3)

Television/Streaming: Partnerships & Collaborations

• GRAND WINNER: Game of Thrones | Joust (HBO)

Television/Streaming: Social Media

• GOLD WINNER: When They See Us – Room to Room (Netflix)

Television/Streaming: Special Shoot Spot/Promo

• GRAND WINNER:  AHS S8 Shockwave for FX Networks, (FX Networks)

Television/Streaming: Spot/Promo

• GRAND WINNER: Equally Powerful Movies (TNT4 Channel)

Television/Streaming: Teaser

• SILVER WINNER “Shangri-La” Teaser #1 (Showtime)
• SILVER WINNER Fosse/Verdon – Again
• SILVER WINNER: “Tick Tock” (Watchmen)
• SILVER WINNER: “Teaser” (Westworld)
• SILVER WINNER: Valley of the Boom: Let There Be Internet (National Geographic)
• SILVER WINNER: When They See Us – Room to Room (Netflix)
• SILVER WINNER: Bugs (The Perfection)

Television/Streaming: Trailer

• GOLD WINNER: Trailer 1 (Chernobyl)
• GOLD WINNER: Kidding Trailer (Showtime Networks)
• GOLD WINNER: “Summer” (Stranger Things 3)
• GOLD WINNER: All That We Share – Connected (TV 2)

Television/Streaming: Video Promo Mixed Campaign

• GOLD WINNER Chernobyl – Campaign (HBO)

Theatrical: Digital/Mobile

• SILVER WINNER: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Sony Entertainment)

Theatrical: Audio/Visual Mixed Campaign

• GRAND WINNER: A Star is Born for A Star is Born, Mark Woollen & Associates

Theatrical: Display

• GRAND WINNER: Godzilla Cinerama Dome Takeover for Godzilla, Warner Bros., Drissi Advertising, Inc.

Theatrical: Integrated Campaign

• GRAND WINNER: Us – (Us, Universal Pictures)

Theatrical: Original Content

• GOLD WINNER: Finomenon: The Little Mermaid 30th Anniversary
  (The Walt Disney Corp.)
• GOLD WINNER: Free Solo: “Climbing El Capitan 360 Video” (Free Solo)
• GOLD WINNER: Outside the Actors Studio | Becoming Pikachu (Detective Pikachu)
• GOLD WINNER: Spoiler Box (Netflix)

Theatrical: Teaser

• GRAND WINNER: “Maybe Tomorrow” — Joker

Theatrical: Trailers

• GOLD WINNER: The Nightingale “Breathtaking” — The Nightingale
• GOLD WINNER: “Enemy” — Us

Theatrical: Spot

• GOLD WINNER:  “Ready” — Captain Marvel
• GOLD WINNER: The Happytime Murders – “1 (800) GET- FELT” (STX Entertainment – The Happytime Murders)

[Thanks to Cat Eldridge for the story.]

The winners of the 2019 Silver Falchion awards were announced at the Killer Nashville Writers Conference in Franklin, Tennessee on August 24. The Silver Falchion award categories cover the spectrum of popular literature.

Here are the Silver Falchion winners of genre interest. The complete list is here.

Sci-fi, Fantasy, and Horror

• Maggie Toussaint, Confound It

Juvenile/Y.A.

• Julianne Lynch, Beneath the Lighthouse

By Martin Morse Wooster: I am watching a show which in the US is called The Heart Guy but in Australia where it originated is called Doctor Doctor.  It’s about a heart surgeon who screwed up and has to spend a year as a general practitioner in the little country town of Whyhope.  I wouldn’t call it “the Australian version of Doc Martin” but the shows are very similar, except The Heart Guy is less about medicine than Doc Martin.  The show I saw tonight is from the show’s second series and was broadcast in Australia in September 2017.

One character is a sf writer who has some success with her first novel because we see her give a reading and members of the audience recite favorite lines from her book.  We see her office on the porch of a large house surrounded by beautiful Australian countryside.  She is stuck on her second novel because trolls constantly tweet her while she’s working and tell her that her first novel is full of mush.

She finds someone camping on her lawn and calls the cops.  The camper is in fact a superfan who comes from some far away town to meet her favorite writer.  She works in a bakery and has made an alien from the author’s novel out of frosting.

The author decides to invite the fan onto her porch for some tea, but the fan sneaks into the author’s office and reads a few pages from her novel in progress.  She instantly solves every plot problem which has been plaguing the author, and the author gratefully writes down the fan’s suggestions on her laptop until she is interrupted by a tweet from another troll.  She turns off her laptop and decides to write her novel on a manual typewriter.

Sf bonus:  There’s an Asian character on the show who is only credited as “Ken” but whose name, I think, is Ken Liu.

Once the commemorative Moon Landing Oreos hit the markets, John King Tarpinian not only took a photo of a package in his local Target store (published here last week), he bought it and gifted it to me when we met for lunch a few days later.

They tasted lovely. The lavender-colored marshmallow filling not only differs in color from standard Oreos (which is white), the texture is slightly more of a gel than normal. (I can imagine orbiting astronauts squeezing it from a tube.) Despite the color, the flavor wasn’t floral or exotic — if not quite the same as usual, the filling didn’t taste very different. The result was a much more pleasing Oreo cookie than the peanut-candy-flavored experiment they temporarily marketed not long ago, which I also tried.

Those of a certain age, like I am, grew up watching TV commercials that demonstrated the infinite techniques for eating Oreos, of which the most important is unscrewing the cookie and eating the filling first.

But fans overthrew this indoctrination at the 1987 Worldcon in England when the Chicago in ’91 Worldcon bidders ran a party with a milk-and-cookies theme. As reported in File 770 #70:

[At the Chicago in ’91 party] those who stayed were fascinated by the Oreos; they kept asking about “the black cookies” and how to eat them. Straight-faced Chicagoans told them you must carefully unscrew the Oreo, eat the white filling, and throw the black cookies away. So they did. Others were coached to methodically time the dunking of their Oreos in milk. Two of the most enthusiastic Oreo-eaters were “the happy Slav brothers,” one fan term for the Yugoslavian Worldcon bidders, whom [Ross Pavlac] claimed decided not to run against Chicago in ’91 because they liked the Oreo party.

Like Chicago radio personality Paul Harvey used to say: “And now you know…the rest of the story.”

Tim Powers has agreed to step in as Mythcon 50’s GOH Emeritus. John Crowley, scheduled to be the Author Guest of Honor, had to cancel his appearance for personal reasons.

Tim Powers, a science-fiction and fantasy writer who arguably is heir to the legacy of Charles Williams, has been Author GOH at Mythcon twice; in Berkeley at Mythcon 26 and at Mythcon 41 in Dallas, Texas. Powers has won three World Fantasy Awards, for his novels Last Call (1992) and Declare (2000), and his story collection The Bible Repairman and Other Stories (2012). He is a five-time nominee for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, winning in 1990 for The Stress of Her Regard.

For more information, click on 50th Mythopoeic Conference in San Diego, California, August 2-5, 2019.