The 37th annual Annie awards were held last night with Pixar’s Up taking the prize for the Best Animated feature, adding weight to the expectation that it will walk away with the Oscar for Best Animated Feature when the awards are handed out on March the 7th.

The International Animated Film Society also honoured Up’s director Pete Docter with the award for Directing in a Feature Production, while Disney’s triumphant return to hand-drawn animation, The Princess and the Frog, walked away with Animated Effects, Character Animation and Voice Acting for Jen Cody’s ebullient craziness as the spoiled Charlotte.

My own favorite of last year, Henry Selick’s sublime adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline, took home both Character and Production Design and Bruno Coulais’ wonderfully haunting score was honoured with Music in a Feature Production. Coraline excelled in each of these areas and Henry Selick’s design for the film captured perfectly the strange world of Coraline Jones and the marvelous and sinister Other world.

Each of these films have a wealth of talent behind them, and while I thought Up petered out before the end, whereas Coraline for my money held the story far better, making for a more satisfying conclusion overall, the awards underline the great work being done in the field of animation.

TheWrap have the full list of awards here.