‘Inside Out,’ ‘Anomalisa,’ and ‘The Peanuts Movie’ earn Annie Award nominations

Anomalisa, Inside Out, Shaun the Sheep Movie, The Good Dinosaur and The Peanuts Movie received nominations on Tuesday morning for best animated feature of 2015 for the 43rd Annie Awards.

Notably missing from the nominees were the hits Minions, Home, Hotel Transylvania 2 and The Spongebob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.

Pixar Animation Studios, which is owned by Disney, dominated the nominations with Inside Out earning 13 and Good Dinosaur receiving 10.

The awards, which are presented by the International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood, announced nominations in 36 categories for film, TV productions, commercials, short subjects, video games and student films as well as honorary and achievement awards.

The Annie Awards also added a new category this year: best animated feature, independent. The inaugural nominees are Boy and the World, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, The Boy and the Beast and When Marnie Was There.

Other nominees announced on Tuesday:

Animated special production: Elf: Buddy’s Musical Christmas, He Named Me Malala, I Am a Witness, Kite, Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck and Niko and the Sword of Light.

Animated short subject: Carface, DISSONANCE, If I was God, On Ice, Sanjay’s Super Team and World of Tomorrow.

General audience animated television/broadcast production: Bob’s Burgers, Bojack Horseman, Moonbeam City and The Simpsons.

Directing in an animated feature production: Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson for Anomalisa; Raul Garcia for Extraordinary Tales; Pete Docter for Inside Out; Roger Allers for Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet; Mark Burton and Richard Starzak for Shaun the Sheep Movie; Steve Martino for The Peanuts Movie; and Hiromasa Yonebayashi for When Marnie Was There.

Voice acting in an animated feature production: Jennifer Jason Leigh for Anomalisa; Amy Poehler for Inside Out; Phyllis Smith for Inside Out; Pierre Coffin for Minions; Jon Hamm for Minions; Alex Garfin for The Peanuts Movie; Hadley Belle Miller for The Peanuts Movie; and Tom Kenny for The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water.

The Juried Awards honour career achievements and notable contributions to animation. The late Joe Ranft, Phil Roman and Isao Takahata received this year’s Winsor McCay award for their contributions to the art of animation, and producer Don Hahn received the June Foray honour for his “significant and benevolent or charitable impact on the art and industry of animation.”

The Annies and the Academy Awards have had a mixed track record in their animated feature category. This year, How to Train Your Dragon 2 captured the top prize, while the Oscar went to Big Hero 6. The year before, both organisations chose Frozen.

The awards will be handed out February 6 at a ceremony at UCLA’s Royce Hall.