The 98th Academy Awards ceremony, hosted by Conan O'Brien, took place on March 15, 2026. ABC broadcast live a ceremony with a wide array of celebrities as presenters. Editor Jennifer Chu highlights ScreenRant's coverage, which followed the development of winners in categories such as Supporting Actress, Animated Film, and Costume Design, where titles like Sentimental Value, Arco, and Avatar: Fire and Ash competed.
Real-time rendering and facial capture: the technology behind the animation nominees 🎬
The nominated animated short films and feature films, such as Arco, showcased extensive use of real-time rendering engines for complex previsualizations. This allowed digital cinematographers to adjust scene lighting with greater agility. Additionally, high-density facial capture, used in productions like Avatar: Fire and Ash, achieved a level of detail that conveys microexpressions with precision, integrating the data directly into procedural animation pipelines.
The makeup for 'Frankenstein' or how to spend three hours in the chair for a three-second shot 😅
The team nominated for Makeup and Hairstyling in Frankenstein deserves extra recognition for their patience. According to rumors, the lead actor required such an extensive application process that, to make the most of the time, rehearsals were done with a stand-in with a plush face. It's ironic to think that, after months of prosthesis design, the monster's most famous shot is one where it appears out of focus and backlit. At least at the Oscars the lighting was good.