53 Animation Pros Invited To Join Academy’s Animation And VFX Branches

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited 398 film industry figures to join its ranks as part of the class of 2023. Fifty-three of those people – around 13% of the total – are animation professionals who have been invited to join the Short Films & Feature Animation and Visual Effects branches of the Academy.

Membership selection is based on professional qualifications with, what the Academy claims is “an ongoing commitment to representation, inclusion, and equity.” The overall 2023 group is composed of 40% women, 34% belonging to underrepresented ethnic/racial communities, and 52% from 50 countries and territories outside the United States. Those numbers, however, don’t represent the breakdown of invitees in the animation sector. For example, only 17% of the invited members were women in the Short Films & Feature Animation and Visual Effects branches. Zero Black artists were invited into the animation branch, the same number as last year.

Also, as last year and the year before that and going back however many years you want, the Academy made no effort to invite Asian filmmakers/artists into its animation branch, despite the fact that nearly 20% of the feature animation Oscar submissions were from Japan and China last year. In fact, only one person from East Asia – 84-year-old South Korean Nelson Shin – was invited into the animation branch, and Shin, ironically, made his name in tv animation, not features or shorts.

26% of the animation professionals invited into Short Films and Animation branch work for The Walt Disney Company, which is by far more invites than any other company received in the branch.

In addition to those invited into the animation/vfx branches, several people involved in animation were invited to other branches. New members in the production and technology branch include Pixar research scientist Fernando de Goes, Netflix’s former global director of virtual production Girish Balakrishnan, and Pixar director of post production Cynthia Slavens. The film editors branch invited Ken Schretzmann, who has worked on Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, The Secret Life of Pets, and Toy Story 3. And Raya and the Last Dragon director Carlos López Estrada was invited to the directors branch.