Strong Year for Best Animated Feature Oscar Nominations
It was a strong year for Best Animated Feature Oscar nominations, and an underdog triumphed. At the 97th annual Academy Awards at Ovation Hollywood in Los Angeles last night, Flow beat competition from Pixar’s Inside Out 2, Dreamworks’ The Wild Robot and Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
Underdog Story
Gints Zilbalodis’ tale about a cat in a flooded world missed out on the Oscar for Best International Feature Film but still became Latvia’s first Oscar win. And it was surely also the first Oscar winner to be made entirely in the free 3D modelling software Blender, cementing the open-source program’s place among the best animation software.
The Film
Flow is a surprisingly peaceful post-apocalyptic tale about a black cat, dog, capybara, ring-tailed lemur, and secretary bird trying to survive a flood. It has no dialogue, instead allowing its expressive artistic style to do the talking, and the almost painterly style of animation is beautiful.
The Team’s Achievement
Flow was one of our highlights of Annecy 2024, and it still seems incredible that it was made by a small team using Blender alone. It was rendered in EEVEE, Blender’s real-time render engine.
The Director’s Reaction
Gints thanked Blender when accepting the award. Speaking to press afterwards, he said: "Any kid now has tools that are used to make now Academy Award-winning films, so I think we’re going to see all kinds of exciting films being made from kids who might not have had a chance to do this before. And it’s a great tool. It’s not in any way a compromise. It’s as good as anything else out there, and we’re going to use it for my next film."
Conclusion
Flow’s victory continues a trend for more interesting and diverse animation Oscar wins in recent years. It follows on the heels of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio in 2023 and Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron in 2024. Another underdog, the stop-motion film Memoir of a Snail, was the fifth title in this year’s list of nominations.
FAQs
Q: What is Flow about?
A: Flow is a post-apocalyptic tale about a black cat, dog, capybara, ring-tailed lemur, and secretary bird trying to survive a flood.
Q: How was Flow made?
A: Flow was made using the free 3D modelling software Blender, rendering in EEVEE, Blender’s real-time render engine.
Q: Who won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature?
A: Gints Zilbalodis’ Flow won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature.
Q: Who won the Oscar for Best Animated Short?
A: Iranian filmmakers Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi earned the Oscar for Best Animated Short with In the Shadow of the Cypress.
