MUMBAI: The second day of FICCI FRAMES closed with the BAF (Best of Animation Frames) awards ceremony, sponsored by Autodesk. The awards celebrates achievement in both creative and technical aspects in the world of animation. With a sizeable international audience in attendance, 14 countries’ participants to be precise, the BAF awards have grown bigger and better over the years.
Starting from five categories to 17 now, with a total of 406 entries in all, BAF awards set the bar for animation in the country and internationally. Stalwarts like Yash Chopra and Graphiti’s Ram Mohan were also present at the occasion. The latter was also awarded a special recognition award for his contribution to Indian animation.
The awards ceremony started out with ‘Return of Hanuman’ (Percept) winning the best animated feature film award. This movie was also converted into a mobile game, which then won a special Jury Award for outstanding contribution to the Indian animation, for Jump Games. Carrying on the best short film (professional) was awarded to the Spanish creation, ‘Engine Thieves’ and in the best short film (amateur/student) category, the jury awarded a France studio, for ‘Oktopodi’ out of 150-odd entries.
TV series ‘Little Krishna’ won in the categories of Best animated TV episode, Best VFX in a TV Episode, Special jury awards for contribution to Indian Animation for best animated and best VFX in a TV episode. Vaibhav Studios won an award for best animated TV commercial (Cadbury Wowie) and Channel [V] won an award for the Best animated promo for their show, Santa Banta. The Best animated Social welfare film went to Dhimant Vyas for Happy Earth.
In the gaming category, Microsoft Games won two awards for the Best PC game (Gears of War) and Best console game (Halo 3). In the mobile gaming category, Mauj Mobile won an award for their Super Cricket and 7 Seas Technologies won an award for Mouse Maze in the online gaming category.
The Best VFX shot in a motion picture category, Imageworks won their BAF for ‘I Am Legend’. Rhythm and Hues won an award for Alpenliebe animated TV commercial in the Best VFX in an ad-film category.
The jury also awarded special awards to Indian studios for their outstanding contribution to Indian animation, which included Miditech for their five films that they sent to the FICCI for nominations. Famous House of Animation also won an award in the same league and also for their promo for UDAYAN; both were special jury awards. Leo Arts Communications won a special award in the Best short film category (student) for their contribution to animation through their hearing/ speech and physically impaired students.
In the VFX category, the special jury awards were given out to FXLabs, Hyderabad for their PC game – Agni; Jump Games and Zapak for online gaming, Kreeda for their multi-player online game – DanceMela; EFX Prasad for best VFX in a motion picture, and Prime Focus for VFX in a commercial and VFX shot of the year for the movie Salaam-e-Ishq.
Margaret Dean, O Entertainment was awarded a special BAF award, by Yash Chopra for special contribution to Animation as was DQ Entertainment’s Tapaas Chakravarti by Amit Khanna.
