Disney’s Big Hero 6 won big at the 13th Visual Effects Society (VES) Awards, winning all five awards in which it was nominated for including top honour for the best animation, shutting out competition from Laika’s The Boxtrolls which was also nominated for five awards and DreamWorks’s How to Train Your Dragon 2, which was nominated for four awards.
The movie won Outstanding Animation in an Animated Feature Motion Picture; Outstanding Created Environment in an Animated Feature (for Into the Portal); Outstanding Effects Simulations in an Animated Feature; Outstanding Animated Character in an Animated Feature (for the character Baymax); and for Outstanding Models in Any Motion Media Project (for City of San Fransokyo).
The awards for Baymax movie came as a surprise considering that the film had just won one award at last week’s Annie Awards, for Animated Effects in an Animated Production.
Disney’s Imagineers also won for their Ratatouille ride at the company’s Paris theme park.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes too had a significant presence at VES Awards winning three awards, including big prize Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Photoreal/Live Action Feature Motion Picture. It also won for Performance of an Animated Character in a Photoreal/Live Action Feature Motion Picture (for Caesar, the ape leader played by Andy Serkis); for Compositing in a Photoreal/Live Action Feature.
The VFX on Apes were created by Weta Digital, led by Joe Letteri, a four-time Oscar winner and Weta’s senior VFX supervisor.
Birdman took the top honor in the Outstanding Supporting Visual Effects in a Photoreal/Live Action Feature. Interstellar too won for Best Created Environment in a Photoreal/Live Action Feature based on its Tesseract setting in the movie.
X-Men: Days of Future Past scored two awards for its stunning Pentagon Kitchen scene: Virtual Cinematography and Effects Simulations.
Game of Thrones dominated the TV side with three wins including Outstanding Visual Effects in a Visual Effects-Driven Photoreal/Live Action Broadcast Program; Compositing in a Photoreal/Live Action Broadcast Program (for “The Watchers on the Wall”); and Created Environment in a Commercial, Broadcast Program, or Video Game (for the Braavos Establisher setting).
On the commercial side, a piece for Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) featuring a CGI orangutan named Maya won three awards.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare won an award for Outstanding Real-Time Visuals in a Video Game.
J.J. Abrams – the director and writer responsible for Alias, Lost, the Star Trek reboots, and the upcoming Star Wars movies – received the Visionary Award at the event.