'Cars' takes home top prize at Annie Awards

While the music industry was celebrating the best of the best at the Grammy Awards, and as Britons were glued to the television for the BAFTA Awards, animation buffs were celebrating their own annual awards ceremony in Glendale, California on Sunday, as the 34th Annual Annie Awards showcased the best and brightest in the animation industry. The Annie Awards, referred to as "animation's highest honor", celebrated advancements in the animation industry, and while Flushed Away managed to bring home the most hardware, the Pixar presentation, Cars nabbed the top honors at the 34th annual Annie Awards.

Pixar's Cars was named the Best Animated Feature of 2006 by the International Animated Film Association, despite the fact that DreamWorks and Flushed Away received more awards in total.

Cars, which tells the story of Lightning McQueen, a pompous NASCAR car who gets lost on the abandoned Route 66 and winds up in Radiator Springs, also grabbed the nod for Best Music in an Animated Feature for Randy Newman's original score. As Cars writer-director John Lasseter accepted the award for Best Animated Feature, he was quoted by Variety as saying, "I think it's been a banner year for animation." Host Tom Kenny made a similar point, with a touch of humor.

"Pixar did what Ford and GM couldn't do this year -- made money off of cars."

But while Cars was taking top honors, Flushed Away grabbed trophies in the categories of Best Animated Effects (Scott Cegielski), Best Feature Character Animation (Gabe Hordos), Best Feature Production Design (Pierre-Olivier Vincent), Best Feature Voice Acting (Sir ) and Best Feature Writing (Dick Clement Ian La Frenais, Chris Lloyd Joe Keenan and Will Davis). While DreamWorks was reveling in the success of Flushed Away, one of their other features this year, Over the Hedge, scored three wins to bring DreamWorks' total up to 8.

Over the Hedge took home Best Feature Character Design (Nicolas Marlet), Best Feature Directing (Tim Johnson and Karey Kickpatrick) and Best Feature Storyboarding (Gary Graham).

While DreamWorks was sweeping the features side of the awards, Cartoon Network was enjoying success on the television front. Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends nabbed three major awards as it won Best Animated TV Series, Best TV Music (James L.

Venable and Jennifer Kes Remington) on the "One False Move episode", and Best TV Production Design (Martin Ansolabehere) on the "Good Wilt Hunting" episode. Also on the TV front, Nickelodeon garnered wins from Avatar and another from Walt Disney grabbed its sole TV award from The Emperor's New School, with Eartha Kitt taking the award for her voice work as the character Yzma.

Though many in the entertainment industry, as well as movie fans in general, don't fixate on the Annie Awards, every single winner of the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature has been given to the movie that takes home the top prize at the Annie Awards.

This year's Academy Award for Best Animated Feature is a race between Cars, Monster House and Happy Feet.