Alumnus is juror for Annie Awards

Film & Video, Image of small, dirty burplap doll stitched together holding it's hand over it's face against a black background

Still from Joaquin Baldwin's animated film "Sebastian's Voodoo"

Media Studies alumnus Joaquin Baldwin (CCAD 2006) had the privilege of being selected as a juror for the 40th Annual Annie Awards, taking place Feb. 2 at UCLA’s Royal Hall in Los Angeles, CA.

The Annie Awards have been honoring excellence in the field of animation for 40 years. There are 30 categories of awards, including best animated feature, television production(s), television commercial, video game, and student film, as well as the achievement and honorary awards.

“They picked me to judge for the Best Student Short category because I had won the Emile Cohl Award at the ASIFA-Hollywood Student Animation Festival in 2008, which was sort of the precursor to this new category at the Annie Awards,” Baldwin said.

Every category has a set of jurors to select nominees because there are so many applicants per category. After the jurors select the top nominees, all ASIFA members vote for the winner.

Baldwin works as a CG layout artist for Walt Disney Studios in Los Angeles, CA. His projects there include Wreck-It Ralph, Tangled Ever After, and Prep & Landing: Naughty vs. Nice.

“The most fun part of the award ceremony will be that this time I know a lot of the nominees, since they also work at Disney,” Baldwin said. “So I'll be biased and rooting for them of course.”

After completing work for Wreck-It Ralph, Baldwin jumped right into work for Frozen, a Disney animated adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale The Snow Queen. The movie is set to be released in November 2013 and will feature the voices of Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel.

Baldwin is represented by the Creative Artists Agency and has received more than 120 international awards for his independent animated shorts Sebastian's Voodoo and Papiroflexia.