Jun 29, 2023

53 animation professionals invited to join the Academy's Animation and VFX departments

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited 398 film professionals to become Academy members for 2023. Fifty-three of them (about 13% of the total) are animation professionals and have been invited to join the Academy's Short Film & Feature Animation and Visual Effects categories.

Membership selection is based on professional qualifications, which the Academy claims is an “ongoing commitment to representativeness, inclusiveness, and fairness.”

The overall composition for 2023 is 40% women, 34% underrepresented ethnic/racial communities, and 52% from 50 countries and territories outside the U.S. The figures are shown in the table below. However, these figures do not represent the breakdown of invitees in the animation category. For example, in the Short & Feature Animation and Visual Effects categories, only 17% of the invited members are women. There were zero black artists invited to the Animation category, the same number as last year.

Also, going back years, last year and the year before, the Academy made no effort to invite Asian filmmakers/artists to the Animation Competition, even though nearly 20% of the Oscar entries for Animated Feature Length came from Japan and China. In fact, only one East Asian filmmaker, 84-year-old South Korean Nelson Shin, was invited to the Animation Competition, and Shin, ironically, made his name in television animation, not features or shorts.

To add, 26% of the animation professionals invited to the shorts category work for The Walt Disney Company, by far the most of any other company invited to the category. Interpret this as you wish.

In addition to those invited to the Animation/VFX department, several people working in animation were also invited to other departments. New members of the Production and Technical Department include Fernando de Gós, Research Scientist at Pixar; Girish Balakrishnan, former Global Director of Virtual Production at Netflix; and Pixar's Post-Production Director Cynthia Slavens. In the film editing department, the company has brought in Ken Schletzman, who worked on Guillermo del Toro's “Pinocchio,” “The Secret Life of Pets,” and “Toy Story 3.” And Carlos Lopez Estrada, director of “Raya and the Last Dragon,” was invited to the director's section.

The following people were invited to the Short & Animated Feature Film and Visual Effects Competitions:

Mahyar Abousaeedi - Turning Red, Incredibles 2 Alex Bulkley - Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Hell and Back Bruno Caetano - Ice Merchants, The Peculiar Crime of Oddball Mr. Dean Fleischer Camp - Marcel the Shell with Shoes On, Catherine Trent Correy - The Godfather of the Bride, Drop Joel Bryan Crawford - Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, The Cruise: A New Era Claire Dodgson - Minions The Rise of Gru, Despicable Me 3 Fabian Driehorst - Night, The Chimney Swift David DuLac - Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie, Happy Feet 2 Maureen Huang - Namoo, Crow: João Gonzalez - Ice Merchants, Nestor Sara Gunnarsdottir - My Year of Dicks, Pirates in Love Mark Gustafsson - Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio, Fantastic Mr. Fox Travis Hathaway - Incredibles 2, Brave David Jesteadt - Inu-oh, Belle Daniel Mark Jeup - Finding Nemo, Toy Story 2 Thomas Jordan - Lightyear Up” Charlie Mackesy - ‘The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse’ Ian Megibben - ‘Lightyear, Soul Richard O'Connor - My Friend Nearly Killed Patti Smith,’ Marianne Lachlan Pendleton - ”The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse Marianne Lachlan Pendragon - An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It, The Toll Emmanuel-Alain Raynal - Steakhouse, Easter Eggs David Ryu - Luca, Coco Nidia Santiago - Negative Space, Oh Willy.... Monica Santos - Between the Shadows, Amélia & Duarte Nelson Singh - Empress Chung, The Transformers: Nathan Warner - Encanto, Zootopia

Gino Acevedo - Monkey. Dawn of the Planet, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies James Lee Baker - Eternals, Ant-Man and the Wasp A.J. Baker - The Hobbit. Briones - “War for the Planet of the Apes,” “Tomorrowland” Nick Crew - “The Adam Project,” “Captain Marvel” Jubin Dave - “Zootopia,” “Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters” Pete Dionne - “Detective Pikachu,” “Wrinkle in Time” Arslan Elber - “Peter Pan and Wendy,” “Christopher Robin” Marcus Frank - “Western Front,” “Tales from the Magic Zoo” Brian Gazdik - “Fantastic Beasts,” “Ready Player One: Dumbledore's Secret,” “Ready Seth Hill - “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Welcome to Marwen” Haresh Hingorani - “Lal Singh Chadda,” “ZERO” Kamil Jafar - “Western Front,” “Never Look Away” Alek Komorovsky - “The Terminator,” “The Dark Knight Terminator,” ‘Dark Fate,’ ‘Captain America,’ ‘Ready Player One: Dark Fate,’ ‘Captain America: Civil War,’ Lana Lang - ‘Kong: Skull Island,’ ‘The Avengers: Age of Ultron’ Wally Lee - ‘Ad Astra,’ ‘Blade Runner,’ ”The Avengers. Ad Astra, Blade Runner 2049 Brian Ritson - Top Gun, Maverick, Maleficent Maverick, Maleficent Scott McIntyre - Saint Maud, Fighting with My Family Julien Millet - “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” “Beauty and the Beast” Mara Inez Newall - “Dungeons & Dragons: Honor among Thieves,” “Black Widow” Jenni O'Byrne - “The Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, The Irishman Cristin Pescosolido - Master, Old Frank Petzold - All Quiet on the Western Front, The Legend of Tarzan Adriano Rinaldi - The Rescue, The Finest Hours P.C. Sanath - 5 Rupees, Baahubali: The Beginning Robert Winter - Moonfall, Army of the Dead Florian Witzel - Avengers Endgame, Dr. Strange

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