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Animator and illustrator whose film Beware of Trains led to a retrospective of her work in Austria in 2023

For more than 40 years Emma Calder forged a distinctive career as an independent animator and producer, working in short film, music video and children’s television. Madame Potatoe, her 1983 graduation project from the Royal College of Art, was an installation featuring a potato-print animated film, a cookbook, T-shirts and a lifesize motorised sculpture of the character eating crisps and watching itself on TV. Four decades on and Emma was still pushing boundaries, picking up the Cutting Edge award at the 2024 British Animation Awards for her short Beware of Trains (2022).

Emma, who has died aged 65 from cancer, was a slightly built but vocal figure in the British animation scene, never prepared to accept the increasing drought of funding for independent animation that was a feature of the early 21st century. When she founded...

Finalists have been announced for the 2024 British Animation Awards, which will take place on March 7 at London’s BFI Southbank.

Contending for best feature film are “Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget,” “A Cat Called Dom,” “Kensuke’s Kingdom,” “Puffin Rock and The New Friends” and “The Amazing Maurice.”

“Christopher at Sea,” “The Debutante” and “All Gucci My Broski” are nominated in the short film category.

Adjoa Andoh, Benedict Cumberbatch, Emilia Clarke, Idris Elba, Claire Foy, Tom Hollander and Hugh Laurie are among the ensemble cast members nominated for best voice performance for “Mog’s Christmas” “The Amazing Maurice” and “The Boy, the Mole, The Fox and the Horse.”

Baa also acknowledges achievement in television, with “Tweedy & Fluff,” “The Sound Collector – Harp Strings,” “The Rubbish World of Dave Spud – Moonbreaker” and “Lloyd of the Flies” nominated for best children’s series.

For best original music, composer David Arnold is nominated for “Mog’s Christmas...

If you love animated cinema but only have the chance to attend one film festival a year, then the Annecy International Animation Festival should definitely be at the top of the list, with the 2022 edition of the festival once again providing the highest possible standards in the art form. Containing a mixture of cutting-edge arthouse animation with the types of films that could precede Hollywood blockbusters, it delivered a great report on the current state of animation. And while the features, ranging from the new Minions movie to anime, might get all of the main coverage, the short film competition is often the best place to see how animation is being pushed forward, whether it’s the types of stories being told or the way that they are animated. As with last year, Dn scoured through the main competition films to provide you with ten shorts that you should definitely have on your radar.