Jan 30, 2020

VES Awards 2020: "The Lion King" won the most awards, "Missing Link" won the honor of Top Animation (full list of winners)

The Visual Effects Society presented the 18th annual VES Awards tonight at the Beverly Hilton in Beverly Hills, California. The awards recognize outstanding visual effects artistry and innovation in film, animation, television, commercials, and video games.

The honors were spread out more evenly than in past years. For example, three different films won the four awards dedicated to animated features: Laika's Missing Link accepted the top award for visual effects in an animated feature, as well as outstanding animated character, while Pixar's Toy Story 4 won for created environment and Frozen 2 took the prize for effects simulation.

It's been a fascinating and exciting awards season to watch as the various awards bodies have selected relatively diverse winners. Klaus, which overperformed last weekend at the Annie Awards, came up empty-handed in the two VES categories in which it was nominated, while Missing Link, which couldn't break through at the Annies, won the two most prestigious VES animation categories (which it adds alongside its earlier Golden Globe win). Meanwhile the Oscar frontrunner Toy Story 4 picked up the Producers Guild Award for animated feature, but has otherwise had a fairly quiet award season.

The top VES award earner this year was The Lion King with three wins, including the top award for visual effects in a photoreal feature. Its three wins were among nine total wins for Disney productions throughout the evening.

Other projects with two wins apiece: The Irishman, Stranger Things 3, Game of Thrones, The Mandalorian, and the Ridley Scott-directed Hennessy commercial “The Seven Worlds” (posted below):

The winners in the 25 categories were selected by members of the Visual Effects Society. For a list of all the nominees go here.

The complete list of winners is below:

The Lion King (Robert Legato, Tom Peitzman, Adam Valdez, Andrew R. Jones)

The Irishman (Pablo Helman, Mitchell Ferm, Jill Brooks, Leandro Estebecorena, Jeff Brink)

Missing Link (Brad Schiff, Travis Knight, Steve Emerson, Benoit Dubuc)

The Mandalorian; “The Child” (Richard Bluff, Abbigail Keller, Jason Porter, Hayden Jones, Roy K. Cancion)

Chernobyl; “1:23:45” (Max Dennison, Lindsay McFarlane, Clare Cheetham, Paul Jones, Claudius Christian Rauch)

Control (Janne Pulkkinen, Elmeri Raitanen, Matti Hämäläinen, James Tottman)

“Hennessy: The Seven Worlds” (Carsten Keller, Selcuk Ergen, Kiril Mirkov, William Laban)

Star Wars: Rise of the Resistance (Jason Bayever, Patrick Kearney, Carol Norton, Bill George)

Alita: Battle Angel; Alita (Michael Cozens, Mark Haenga, Olivier Lesaint, Dejan Momcilovic)

Missing Link; Susan (Rachelle Lambden, Brenda Baumgarten, Morgan Hay, Benoit Dubuc)

Stranger Things 3; Tom/Bruce Monster (Joseph Dubé-Arsenault, Antoine Barthod, Frederick Gagnon, Xavier Lafarge)

“Cyberpunk 2077”; Dex (Jonas Ekman, Jonas Skoog, Marek Madej, Grzegorz Chojnacki)

The Lion King; The Pridelands (Marco Rolandi, Luca Bonatti, Jules Bodenstein, Filippo Preti)

Toy Story 4; Antiques Mall (Hosuk Chang, Andrew Finley, Alison Leaf, Philip Shoebottom)

Game of Thrones; The Iron Throne; Red Keep Plaza (Carlos Patrick DeLeon, Alonso Bocanegra Martinez, Marcela Silva, Benjamin Ross)

The Lion King (Robert Legato, Caleb Deschanel, Ben Grossmann, AJ Sciutto)

The Mandalorian; The Sin; The Razorcrest (Doug Chiang, Jay Machado, John Goodson, Landis Fields IV)

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (Don Wong, Thibault Gauriau, Goncalo Cababca, François-Maxence Desplanques)

Frozen 2 (Erin V. Ramos, Scott Townsend, Thomas Wickes, Rattanin Sirinaruemarn)

Stranger Things 3; “Melting Tom/Bruce” (Nathan Arbuckle, Christian Gaumond, James Dong, Aleksandr Starkov)

The Irishman (Nelson Sepulveda, Vincent Papaix, Benjamin O'Brien, Christopher Doerhoff)

Game of Thrones; “The Long Night”; “Dragon Ground Battle” (Mark Richardson, Darren Christie, Nathan Abbot, Owen Longstaff)

“Hennessy: The Seven Worlds” (Rod Norman, Guillaume Weiss, Alexander Kulikov, Alessandro Granella)

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance; “She Knows All the Secrets” (Sean Mathiesen, Jon Savage, Toby Froud, Phil Harvey)

The Beauty (Marc Angele, Aleksandra Todorovic, Pascal Schelbli, Noel Winzen)