The other three nominees are done in stop-motion, an old animation form that rarely crops up so frequently in one year.
DreamWorks Animation formed Oriental DreamWorks last February with China Media Capital, the Shanghai Media Group and Shanghai Alliance, three entities backed by the city government.
Randy Thornton, a producer for three decades at Walt Disney Records, argues that the resurgence of successful original musicals – in animation form – which began in the late 1980s with the Oscar-winning The Little Mermaid, was equally dependent on individual talent.: "Howard Ashman and Alan Menken, the songwriters behind The Little Mermaid, regenerated everything".
Namely, messages received via the iOS and Android app are displayed in animation form, one word at a time, plus emoji — a feature that emphasises their ephemeral nature but also makes messages harder to screen capture.
They're also stunning in short, looping animation form.
While the animated format allowed the producers to create more exotic alien landscapes and life forms, animation errors, and liberal reuse of shots and musical cues have tarnished the series' reputation.
In 2008, his animations formed the backdrop for a night of music and science at the Guggenheim Museum called "Genes and Jazz".
Mostly his animations form the basis of special effects in films, but they have wider scientific appeal: Batty's techniques are also used to to view or measure phenomena that either don't exist on Earth or are too dangerous in real life.
"Characters can develop into manga, anime, potentially a big business," he said, referring to the popular Japanese comic book and animation art forms.
In 1946 he joined an animation studio formed by The Rank Organisation under David Hand, the director of Walt Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
