Apr 7, 2021

VES Awards 2021: "Soul" Sweeps the animation category and Disney wins 10 awards (full list of winners)

The Visual Effects Society presented the 19th annual VES Awards last night via a virtual celebration. The awards recognize visual effects artistry and innovation in film, animation, television, commercials, and video games.

Soul came out on top, winning five awards, including outstanding visual effects in an animated feature, the event's top prize for an animated film. In addition to winning all four awards for animated films, Soul took home a fifth honor for virtual cinematography in a cg project.

The Mandalorian earned the top prize for visual effects in photoreal episodic projects, as well as winning two other awards. The Midnight Sky was awarded the prize for visual effects in a photoreal feature, one of two awards it won.

Overall, it was a big year of wins for streaming services: Disney/Pixar's Soul and The Mandalorian are Disney+ exclusives, while The Midnight Sky is from Netflix. Disney, which also won awards for The One and Only Ivan and Mulan, dominated the ceremony with ten wins (one more than last year). Netflix followed with six wins.

Only two winners were not streaming exclusives (in categories where applicable): Fear the Walking Dead and Mank, which had a limited theatrical run. A large reason for this is of course the pandemic, which forced films set for theatrical release such as Soul and Mulan onto streaming. But even post-pandemic, this is likely a trend we're only going to see more of at future VES editions.

There were also two juried awards: The VES Award for Creative Excellence was presented to visual effects supervisor and director of photography Rob Legato, while the VES Lifetime Achievement Award went to filmmaker Peter Jackson.

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

The Midnight Sky (Matt Kasmir, Greg Baxter, Chris Lawrence, Max Solomon, David Watkins)

Mank (Wei Zheng, Peter Mavromates, Simon Carr, James Pastorius)

Soul (Pete Docter, Dana Murray, Michael Fong, Bill Watral)

The Mandalorian, The Marshal (Joe Bauer, Abbigail Keller, Hal Hickel, Richard Bluff, Roy Cancino)

The Crown, Gold Stick (Ben Turner, Reece Ewing, Andrew Scrase, Jonathan Wood)

Ghost of Tsushima (Jason Connell, Matt Vainio, Jasmin Patry, Joanna Wang)

Walmart, “Famous Visitors” (Chris “Badger” Knight, Lori Talley, Yarin Mares, Matt Fuller)

The Bourne Stuntacular (Salvador Zalvidea, Tracey Gibbons, George Allan, Matthías Bjarnason, Scott Smith)

The One and Only Ivan, Ivan (Valentina Rosselli, Thomas Huizer, Andrea De Martis, William Bell)

Soul, Terry (Jonathan Hoffman, Jonathan Page, Peter Tieryas, Ron Zorman)

The Mandalorian, “The Jedi,” The Child (John Rosengrant, Peter Clarke, Scott Patton, Hal Hickel)

Arm & Hammer, “Once Upon a Time,” Tuxedo Tom (Shiny Rajan, Silvia Bartoli, Matias Heker, Tiago Dias Mota)

Mulan, Imperial City (Jeremy Fort, Matt Fitzgerald, Ben Walker, Adrian Vercoe)

Soul, You Seminar (Hosuk Chang, Sungyeon Joh, Peter Roe, Frank Tai)

The Mandalorian, “The Believer,” Morak Jungle (Enrico Damm, Johanes Kurnia, Phi Tran, Tong Tran)

Soul (Matt Aspbury, Ian Megibben)

The Midnight Sky, Aether (Michael Balthazart, Jonathan Opgenhaffen, John-Peter Li, Simon Aluze)

Project Power (Yin Lai Jimmy Leung, Jonathan Edward Lyddon-Towl, Pierpaolo Navarini, Michelle Lee)

Soul (Alexis Angelidis, Keith Daniel Klohn, Aimei Kutt, Melissa Tseng)

Lovecraft Country, “Strange Case,” Chrysalis (Federica Foresti, Johan Gabrielsson, Hugo Medda, Andreas Krieg)

Project Power (Russell Horth, Matthew Patience, Julien Rousseau)

Lovecraft Country, “Strange Case,” Chrysalis (Viktor Andersson, Linus Lindblom, Mattias Sandelius) Crawford Reilly

Burberry, “Singin' In the Rain” (Alex Lovejoy, Mithun Alex, David Filipe, Amresh Kumar)

Fear the Walking Dead, “Bury Her Next to Jasper's Leg” (Frank Iudica, Scott Roark, Daniel J. Yates)

Migrants (Antoine Dupriez, Hugo Caby, Lucas Lermytte, Zoé Devise)