‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’ wins Annie for best animated feature

DreamWorks Animation’s “How to Train Your Dragon 2” was named best animated film of 2014 at the 42nd Annie Awards on Saturday evening at UCLA’s Royce Hall.

The sequel to the 2010 hit about a young Viking teenager and his pet dragon won a total of six awards. Besides best film, Dean DeBlois won for director, Fabio Lignini for character animation, Truong “Tron” Son Mai for storyboarding, John Powell and Jonsi for music, and John K. Carr for editorial.

“How to Train Your Dragon 2” won the Golden Globe and is nominated for an Academy Award for animated feature.

Focus Features/Laika’s “The Boxtrolls” won for production design and in the voice acting category for Ben Kingsley as Archibald Snatcher, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller won for writing for Warner Bros.’ “The Lego Movie,” Walt Disney Animation Studios’ “Big Hero 6” earned an Annie for animated effects, and Reel FX Animation Studios/Twentieth Century Fox’s “The Book of Life” received the honor for character design.

Disney’s “Feast” won for animated short.

On the television side, winners included “The Simpsons” for general audience animated television/broadcast production, “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” for animated special production, “Gravity Falls” for animated television/broadcast production for a children’s audience, and Bill Farmer as the voice of Goofy and Grandma on “Disney’s Mickey Mouse.”

Producers Didier Brunner and Lee Mendelson and veteran animator Don Lusk won the Winsor McCay Award; author and critic Charles Solomon, whose reviews films for the L.A. Times, received the June Foray Award, a service honor; DreamWorks Animation’s Apollo Software was the recipient of the Ub Iwerks Award for technical achievement; and The Walt Disney Family Museum earned the Annie Special Achievement Award.

The Annie Awards are presented by the The International Animated Film Society, ASIFA-Hollywood, which promotes the art and craft of animation.

See the complete list of winners and nominees here.

Twitter: @mymackie