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Academy Awards

Oscars: 5 things we learned about the animation nominees

Carly Mallenbaum
USA TODAY
From left: Animated Feature Film nominees Hiromasa Yonebayashi and Yoshiaki Nishimura ('When Marnie Was There'), Jonas Rivera ('Inside Out'), Rosa Tran ('Anomalisa'), Richard Starzak, ('Shaun the Sheep Movie') Pete Docter ('Inside Out'), Duke Johnson ('Anomalisa'),  Alê Abreu ('Boy and the World'), Mark Burton ('Shaun the Sheep Movie') and Charlie Kaufman, ('Anomalisa') prior to the Oscar Week: Animated Features event on Thursday.

With The Academy's Oscar picks already submitted, the time to lobby for votes has come and gone. So on Thursday night in Beverly Hills, this year's nominated animated feature filmmakers got together to relax and chat about their work. The Q&A event was moderated by last year's winners, Big Hero 6's producer Roy Conli and directors Don Hall and Chris Williams.

Here are 5 things we learned (one for each nominated film) at the Oscar Symposium for Animated Features:

1. Inside Out's director had an imaginary elephant friend

– Pictured (L-R): Fear (voice of Bill Hader),  Joy (voice of Amy Poehler) and Disgust (voice of Mindy Kaling)in a scene from Disney•Pixar's  motion picture 'Inside Out'.

Imaginary friend Bing Bong, an elephant-like creature made of cotton candy, is an important character in the Pixar movie favorited to win best animated feature. Docter talked about some of the inspiration for the Inside Out character: his own tiny elephant imaginary friend. "His name was Norman. He drove a magnetic car on the ceiling," said Docter.

2. The animator behind the breakfast scene in Anomalisa had to quit

(L-R) David Thewlis voices Michael Stone and Jennifer Jason Leigh is Lisa in the animated film "Anomalisa."

There's a scene in the stop-motion Anomalisa where the protagonist David suddenly stops falling for Lisa-- he gets annoyed by Lisa's eating habits and hears her voice in a different way. The emotional scene was all too real for one animator who, according to co-director Duke Johnson, "had to quit, because he was going through a divorce at the time," and the scene felt too close to home.

3. The Shaun the Sheep Movie filmmakers begged Dave Grohl to let them use a Foo Fighters song

Shaun (from left), Slip and Bitzer in the animated 'Shaun the Sheep Movie.'

Directors Mark Burton and Richard Starzak had a stop-motion sequence in Shaun the Sheep that went perfectly with the Foo Fighters' touching song Home... and then they realized they didn't have the rights to use the song. So, the filmmakers sent Dave Grohl a "heartfelt letter" with a drawing of the adorable sheep Shaun in a pleading pose, begging Grohl to allow the song in their movie, said Burton. It worked.

4. The When Marnie Was There director got the ultimate compliment

Hailee Steinfeld and Kiernan Shipka star as the voices of two girls in "When Marnie Was There."

Anime director Hiromasa Yonebayashi said he spent a lot of time making sure the water in YA novel-based film When Marnie Was There looked right, because flowing water, tears, and rain was a big theme of the movie, he said through an interpreter. So he was delighted when Studio Ghibli co-founder, Hayao Miyazaki, "commented that the water was very well done," he said.

5. The Boy and the World filmmaker felt like someone else actually directed his movie

Brazilian Alê Abreu, who wrote, directed and animated the playful Boy and the World, was inspired to make his film after seeing a "little boy in his diary he'd drawn," he said through an interpreter. The movie was "an exercise in freedom, to try and draw like a child, and not remember that critical voice of an adult," he said. In fact, Abreu let go so completely that "sometimes I felt like this boy's the director, not me," he said.

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