In an awards ceremony at Hollywood’s Jaxx Theater Sunday night, the Los Angeles Animation Festival (LAAF) gave out its honors to 80 short films and 10 scripts in competition in over 40 professional and student categories.
The Best of the Fest prize went to Under a Shooting Contrail, which was the top student prize winner in the experimental category and also won the festival’s Best Student Director award for Japan’s Rika Nakayama, a Rhode Island School of Design graduate who is currently an MFA candidate in the Experimental Animation Program at the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).
Top prizes also went to the latest short from renowned Canadian filmmakers Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis, The Flying Sailor, which won both the number one experimental and character-based prizes. First prize in comedy went to Sleepy by Rich Webber (U.K.), while Best Director went to China’s Lei Chen for his film The End of War, which also won first prize honors in stop motion.
Sponsors of LAAF this year were ASIFA-Hollywood, Titmouse and Toon Boom.
LAAF 2022 Main Category Winners
See the full list of winners at laafest.com.
Best of the Fest — Under a Shooting Contrail
+ Best Student Director — Rika Nakayama
Best Director — Lei Chen for The End of War
LAAF Special Jury Award — Meal on the Plate, Chenglin Xie
FilmFest Award for Excellence — Mileage; Jennifer Wu, Kym Santiana, Ruyee Lu, Christopher Hsueh, Nicole Taylor-Topacio, Joy Zhou, Ruby Saysanasy, Miranda Li & Saul Benavides
Perfect Combo Award for Excellence — What They Left Behind, Xingyu Gu
Parallax Award for Excellence — Fishi Out of Water, Katie Farrar
Parallax Award for Excellence in Drama — A Thief’s Legacy, Sinai Hwang
Best Character-Based:
— WINNER: The Flying Sailor, Amanda Forbis & Wendy Tilby
— SILVER: The Heart Errs, Janis Robertson
— BRONZE: Meal on the Plate
Student Character-Based:
— WINNER: A Dog Under Bridge, Tang Rehoo
— SILVER: Siblings, Kenet Garcia Rojas
— BRONZE: Mr. Catman Bring Me a Dream, Tzu-Yu Pan
Comedy:
— WINNER: Sleepy, Rich Webber
— SILVER: Trojan Horace, Scott Graham
— BRONZE: Don’t Take Nut for an Answer, Paul Louis Smith
Student Comedy:
— WINNER: What If Alvin, Yuyuan Chen
— SILVER: Special Delivery, Olivia Baylor
LAAF LOL Award — The Whippersnappers (Pilot), Ryan Cole
Perfect Combo Outrageous Comedy Award — Rat Snacks, Antony Kos
Parallax Award for Excellence in Comedy — Musimatics, Sung Min Park
Stop Motion:
— WINNER: The End of War, Lei Chen
— SILVER: 7 lbs. 8 oz., Yoo Lee
— BRONZE: Safe at Home, Zoë DeLeon
Experimental:
— WINNER: The Flying Sailor
— SILVER: Alambic: By Winds and Tides, Bogdan Anifrani-Fedach
— BRONZE: Making Art in America, 2020-2021, Angie Wang
Student Experimental:
— WINNER: Under a Shooting Contrail
— SILVER: Sunset City, Junwen Yu
— BRONZE: Perfect City: The Mother, Shengwei Zhou
Music Video:
— WINNER: “Drumtalk” – Cousins, Magic Steven
— SILVER: In the Big Yard Inside the Teeny-Weeny Pocket, Yoko Yuki, music by honninman
CGI:
— WINNER: A-Ha’s Egg Cake, Raymond Lau
— SILVER: Undermined, Matthias Kapuvari
Student CGI — The Best Friend, Parker Chatham, Jarrod Chatham, Clara (Yun-Cheng) Chou
Parallax Award for Excellence in 2D — Horned Cook, Gola, Adam Musa Othman
2D:
— WINNER: Know You Well, Michaela Wadzinski
— SILVER: Little Hurts, Debra Solomon
Student 2D:
— WINNER: Solaris, Reno Nevada & Alistair Baudelaire
— SILVER: Friendship, Lin Tam
— BRONZE: Drunkland, Sydney Chen
