Annie Awards Noms: 'Inside Out', 'Anomalisa', 'Shaun The Sheep', 'Good Dinosaur' & 'Peanuts ' Up For Best Feature

 wo Disney-Pixar films and an adult stop-motion animated comedy and drama were some of the top features nominated at the 43rd Annie Awards. And even though Pixar has The Good Dinosaur and Inside Out in the running, it’s the latter title about the emotions in an adolescent girl’s head that’s charging the way with 14 nominations.

The Annies are given out by the International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood, recognizing the year’s best in animation across 36 categories. The 2016 awards ceremony is set for February 6 at UCLA’s Royce Hall.
Overlooked in the best feature category was Universal/Illumination Entertainment’s Minions, the second-highest-grossing animated title of the year at $335.8M behind Inside Out‘s $356.4M. Nontheless, Minions counts the third-most noms with eight after The Good Dinosaur‘s nine.
Duke Johnson and Charlie Kaufman’s R-rated stop motion title Anomalisa earned five nominations including animated feature, music, editing, voice acting and directing.
Two other titles earned five nominations: Shaun The Sheep The Movie and The Peanuts Movie. Shaun grabbed best animated feature, directing, writing, editing and production design, while Peanuts took best animated feature, directing, character design and two nods for voice acting.
This year’s best animated feature nominations include: Anomalisa (Paramount Pictures), Inside Out (Pixar Animation Studios), Shaun The Sheep The Movie (Aardman Animations), The Good Dinosaur (Pixar Animation Studios), and The Peanuts Movie (Blue Sky Studios, Twentieth Century Fox Animation).
There’s an inaugural best animated feature indie category and the noms in that slot include Boy And The World (Filme de Papel), Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet  (Ventanarosa), The Boy And The Beast (Studio Chizu), and When Marnie Was There (Studio Ghibli).
Among those receiving career achievement recognition are three Winsor McCay recipients – Joe Ranft, Phil Roman and Isao Takahata — for their career contributions to the art of animation. Also, the June Foray recipient will be awarded to Don Hahn, who as a producer has been behind such Disney cornerstones as The Lion King, The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, and Beauty And The Beast among others.
ASIFA-Hollywood is the largest chapter of the international organization ASIFA,which  supports a range of animation activities and preservation efforts through its membership. Current initiatives include the Animation Archive, Animation Aid Foundation, animated film preservation, special events, classes and screenings. The Annie Awards were created in 1972 by veteran voice talent Foray.