Reviewing a Review or Two

Just got the February Animation Magazine in the mail yesterday. It has two articles on the Annie Awards. An overview article by editor Ramin Zahed on page 18 and article devoted to the 3-year-old Gaming Animation Annie Award written by Ryan Ball that appears on page 10.

There is one mistake in the overview article. In the Certificate of Merit list they put an of between Gemma Ross and Woodbury University. Gemma did not attend Woodbury, Woodbury University is getting the Certificate of Merit for all of they kindness and support to ASIFA-Hollywood over the years.

Now on to the Gaming Article, it is so good to see this new award getting the recognition it deserves and not just because when they start quoting you in Animation Magazine it means that you have somewhat arrived a little.

Gaming is giant, a whole new animation field that has gone mostly overlooked for far too many years. And yes, I was a broken record on the board for years about getting this award on the slate but everyone knew it was an over due category. The Board just didn`t know how to get the Gaming Industry to take notice of the Annies and submit games. I think there was some early fear that it would be embracing to offer an award and have no one submit games.

Somebody had to take the message out to the game companies. A lot of the credit for chasing down the Game Developers in the first couple of years goes to Tom Hanson, the then manager of my local game store, for going out and beating the bushes in the first couple of years of this category. He called a lot of Developers and emailed all of his game store sales contacts to try and get through to the people with the power to submit games. We also did E3 a couple of years in a row and approached as many Developers as we could get the ear of.



It is still an up hill battle to get a wide spectrum of games submitted. We still seem to be running to games licensed from animation films. Note this year`s nominees (above).

There is still a need for a more diverse slate of games. We will have pasted the major milestone when we get to the point where the majority of the games submitted are not tied to a current animation feature. At that point we will be a more mature award. It takes time. But it is getting better every year. We well get there.

Meanwhile check out the current issue of Animation Magazine, (if you are an ASIFA-Hollywood member you should be getting a free issue in the mail) make sure you vote for the Annies before the voting deadline and come on out to find out who wins on Feb. 8th at the 35th Annual Annie Awars.