This year’s 54th NAACP Image Awards was held last week. It started with several days’ worth of non-televised awards and ended with the full ceremony broadcast on BET Saturday night.
Animated fare saw its share of winners, as usual. Below is a list of the animation- and comic-related nominees and winners; animated entries are in italics, while the category winners are in bold.
Outstanding Animated Motion Picture
- Wendell & Wild (Netflix)
- DC League of Super-Pets (Warner Bros. Pictures / WAG / DC)
- Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (Netflix)
- Puss in Boots: The Last Wish (Universal Pictures)
- Turning Red (Pixar Animation Studios)
Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance (Motion Picture)
- Keke Palmer – Lightyear (Walt Disney Studios)
- Angela Bassett – Wendell & Wild (Netflix)
- Kevin Hart – DC League of Super-Pets (Warner Bros. Pictures / WAG / DC)
- Lyric Ross – Wendell & Wild (Netflix)
- Taraji P. Henson – Minions: The Rise of Gru (Universal Pictures)
Outstanding Short-Form (Animated)
- More Than I Want To Remember (MTV Entertainment Studios)
- I Knew Superman (Houghtonville Animation)
- Supercilious (York Cinemas)
- The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse (Apple Studios)
- We Are Here (271 Films)
Outstanding Animated Series
- The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder (Disney+)
- Central Park (Apple TV+)
- Eureka! (Disney Junior)
- Gracie’s Corner TV (YouTube)
- Zootopia+ (Disney+)
Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance (Television)
- Kyla Pratt – The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder (Disney+)
- Billy Porter – The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder (Disney+)
- Cedric the Entertainer – The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder (Disney+)
- Chris Bridges – Karma’s World (Netflix)
- Cree Summer – Rugrats (Nickelodeon)
Outstanding Short Form Series (Comedy or Drama)
- Between The Scenes – The Daily Show (Comedy Central)
- Rise Up, Sing Out (Disney+)
- Zootopia+ (Disney+)
- Oh H*ll No! With Marlon Wayans (Facebook Watch)
- Sunday Dinner (Youtube)
Outstanding Breakthrough Creative (Television)
- Hannah Cope – Karma’s World (Netflix)
- Amy Wang – From Scratch (Netflix)
- Branden Jacobs-Jenkins – Kindred (FX)
- Quinta Brunson – Abbott Elementary (ABC)
- Syreeta Singleton – Rap Sh!t (HBO Max)
My thoughts
The outstanding motion picture is “Wendell & Wild,” a Netflix stop-motion animated horror comedy. It beat films from traditional animation studios, i.e. Warner Bros., Illumination, and Pixar.
That said, Disney did pretty well. The box office failure “Lightyear” managed to score a win, for motion picture voice acting (Keke Palmer’s character Izzy). On the TV side, Disney also scored two wins for “The Proud Family” reboot, for TV voice acting (Pratt voices Penny Proud) and for outstanding animated series. Given “The Proud Family” made up three of the five available nominations, it’d be surprising if it didn’t win.
Animation came up short, however, for “Outstanding Breakthrough Creative (Television),” which saw ABC’s new hit sitcom “Abbot Elementary” win over Netflix’s “Karma’s World,” a CGI animated show about a pre-teen girl interested in hip-hop. I’ve seen the show, and it’s OK; like “Moon Girl and Devil Dinosaur,” an episode touched on Black hair care (still a rarity in animation).
Image from “Wendell & Wild.” (Netflix)
