ADG Creates New Award Category Recognizing Excellent In Production Design For Animated Features

The Art Directors Guild (ADG) will debut a new award category during its 2018 annual awards ceremony.  The category is titled Excellence in Production Design for an Animated Feature Film and will be added to the other categories honoring production design in theatrical motion pictures, television, commercials and music videos.  The ADG award ceremony will take place on Saturday, January 27, 2018, in the Ray Dolby Ballroom at Hollywood & Highland.

The ADG has previously recognized feature animation as a contender in its awards for the past 11 years as part of the award honoring Excellence in Production Design for a Fantasy Feature Film. Past nominees have included "Finding Nemo," "The Incredibles," "Ratatouille," "Wall-E" and "The Adventures of TinTin."

Qualifications for Excellence in Production Design in an Animated Feature Film eligibility include: • Animated feature films representing 2D (hand drawn), 3D (CGI), clay animation/puppet and motion–capture (live-action/CGI hybrid) will all qualify for this award category. • A feature film must have the majority of its sets and locations created using a frame-by-frame technique, and usually falls into one of the two general fields of animation: narrative or abstract. • Some of the techniques of animating films include but are not limited to hand-drawn animation, computer animation, stop-motion, clay animation, pixilation, cutout animation, pinscreen, camera multiple pass imagery, kaleidoscopic effects created frame-by-frame, and drawing on the film frame itself. • Motion capture and real-time puppetry are not by themselves considered animation techniques. • Animation must figure in no less than 75 percent of the picture's total running time. • A narrative animated film must have a significant number of the top eight (8) major characters animated. • If the picture is created in a cinematic style that could be mistaken for live action, producers must submit information supporting how and why the picture is substantially a work of animation rather than live action.

Producers of this year's ADG Awards (#ADGawards) are Production Designers Thomas A. Walsh, ADG and Thomas Wilkins, ADG. Award submissions open online October 5 – November 9, 2017. Online nomination voting will be held December 6, 2017– January 3, 2018 and nominees announced on January 4, 2018. Final online balloting will be held January 8 –25, and winners will be announced at the ceremony. ADG Awards are open only to productions when made within the U.S. by producer’s signatory to the IATSE agreement. Foreign entries are acceptable without restrictions.

For a complete list of submission guidelines, please visit:

https://www.adg.org/sites/art/information/ADG_Awards/22nd_ADG_Annual_Awards_Rules_6.pdf