Annie Awards Check Into Virtual Reality With Inaugural Prize
The Annie Awards, recognizing a need to celebrate all the animated content being made these days in virtual reality, has created a category this year to honor that work.
Until now, VR content had to create a 2D version and, in some cases, play in theaters, in order to become eligible for awards recognition, which can be a time-consuming and costly process. So ASIFA-Hollywood, the organization behind the Annies, set up a VR lab at the Burbank HQ so that judges could view the content as it was meant to be seen.
The inaugural Annie nominees for VR production are Google Spotlight Stories’ “Age of Sail,” directed by John Kahrs; Sundance 2018 selection “BattleScar,” directed by Nico Casavecchia and Martin Allais; Baobab Studios’ “Crow: The Legend,” directed by Eric Darnell, pictured above; Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg’s “MindPalace,” directed by Carl Krause and Dominik Stockhausen; and Polyarc’s “Moss,” which is a VR game.
The Annies will be presented Feb. 2 at UCLA’s Royce Hall at 7 p.m. For the entire nomination list, see annieawards.org.
See the full story here: https://variety.com/2019/film/spotlight/annie-awards-check-into-virtual-reality-with-inaugural-prize-1203114890/