HAPPY FEET WINS THE OSCAR!

Why so glum? You just won an Oscar!

Some people are surprised, others are not. But the fact remains that Happy Feet has won the Best Animated Feature Film Academy Award for 2006.

But what does this mean for the future of animated films? Will the motion-cature process become the new thing? Is 2D dead? Is CG on the way out? Even Disney is now jumping on the mo-cap bandwagon, setting up their very own department dedicated to motion-capture.

A quick look at this year's animated films tells us that not everyone is switching over to mo-cap...yet. Shrek the Third, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the Bee Movie are all CG and the hand drawn Simpsons Movie is sure to be a big hit this summer.

But you can probably bet that because of Happy Feet's success, every studio will start production on a mo-cap movie and have them out as early as next year.

Also, Torill Kove's The Danish Poet won the Oscar for Best Animated Short Subject.

OSCAR SHORT SUBJECT NOMINEE: THE DANISH POET

A Canadian animator has been nominated for an Academy Award this year for her film The Danish Poet. It follows the story of a young poet who gets 'poet's block' and goes on a self realization journey in Norway. Events unfold and he finds that everything that happens in his life happens for a reason and it all unfolds in this 15-minute film.

Torill Kove, an animator from Montreal, made this film for the National Film Board of Canada. It is narrated by famous Norwegian actress, Liv Ulmann.

The Danish Poet is the second film for Torill Kove to be nominated for an Oscar. The first was My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts in 2000.

I couldn't find the whole film online, but here is a clip: