AWN Oscar Tour Travelogue

No Oscar Tour would be complete without the famous Nominee Cake! As the 2011 Tour winds down, so do the nominees and assorted guests, at least for one evening. Held again this year at Ron's house, the party was fun, intimate and warm, despite the rainy weather outside. And of course, we all got sugared-up feasting on the nominated films - literally!

The third day of the LA Oscar tour actually began with a morning stop at CAA in Century City before a small gathering of agents and producers in their lavish screening room.

Every year for more than a decade we’ve toured DreamWorks’ expansive Glendale campus with either the Animation Show of Shows, our Oscar Showcase tour, or both. We’re always greeted with open arms and we’re always shown tasty morsels of upcoming films – last year, for example, Simon Otto showed us 20 minutes of How To Train Your Dragon well before it was released. This year did not disappoint.

If it’s Friday, it must be Pixar. And as most would attest, a visit to Pixar is pretty special. In no particular order, we met John Lasseter, crawled around the infamous Love Lounge, drank Scotch with Andrew Gordon in the Lucky 7 Lounge, met up with Oscar-winner Ralph Eggleston and his mending broken finger, had lunch with Roger Gould, screened the nominated films for 235+ staff, saw concept art, original models and other visual goodies from several films and talked to Bob Peterson. And, we bought Girl Scout cookies in the Pixar lobby. Quite the day indeed.

Day 2 of our tour started exactly as Day 1 ended – everyone sleeping snugly in their rooms at the Skywalker Ranch Inn. Soon, we'd be off in the pouring ran in search of PDI...Dan Sarto continues the northern California leg of the 2011 AWN Oscar Tour with a trip to PDI/DreamWorks and a funky nameless Berkeley cafe.

In a couple hours we’re off to the Disney Museum and then over to Skywalker Ranch for the rest of the day and evening. It’s funny – in all the years we’ve been doing this annual tour and get-together with the animated short nominees, this is the first year I’ve gone on the northern California leg. One thing or another has always kept me in LA. I’m excited, though my room is freezing. I should drag this room heater back home – it would make a great air conditioner for my office.

Now with the crazy award season over, AWN offers readers a chance to catch up with all the adventures of the animation nominees. Watch interviews with the nominees and a who's who of the animation community as part of AWN's Oscar Showcase videoblog! New episodes will be posting weekly. Check them out on AWNtv.

Check out the pics from AWN/Acme Filmworks party. A gathering of the who's who of the animation community.

In L.A., the nominees visted agencies ICM, CAA and William Morris. Here is their visits in pictures.

"We're almost there." I don't remember which nominee said it, but it was very fitting, given that Walt Disney Animation Studios was the last stop yesterday on the L.A. leg. Of course, "Almost There," from The Princess and the Frog, summarizes the hopes and dreams of all the nominees. So, it was also very fitting that Princess and the Frog directors Ron Clements and John Musker were on hand to view the shorts and meet with the nominees.

The AWN Oscar Showcase tour stops at agency CAA where the filmmakers talk animation with agents and "Napoleon Dynamite" star and fellow animator Jon Heder.