Oscars 2013: should animated films have their own category? Stuart Messinger, Award Leader for Animation at Staffordshire University tells The Telegraph it's also been a winning year for British animation talent. It's fantastic to have the UK represented [in the awards nominations]. Frankenweenie was shot at Three Mills Studios in London, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! is from a British studio (Aardman) and ParaNorman's also got a predominantly British team and is co-directed by Brit Chris Butler. But with nominated films already triumphing at the box office, does a gong greatly increase audience awareness and sales? There is evidence of DVD sales spiking around the Oscar awards ceremony for winning films. Toy Story 3 saw an increase in sales of 449.2% the week before it won in 2010, and Spirited Away's sales increased a whopping 35,132% a week after its win in 2003. But these are largely exceptions to the rule: Ratatouille, which won the Oscar for best animated film in 2008, did not see an associated uplift in sales. In fact, its sales dropped 84% during awards season. However, an awards win does help to build an animated film's standing within the industry. Messinger says that "it certainly helps put you on the map. It's an internationally recognised accolade and the global press coverage which follows helps raise the profile of what is essentially a niche art form. While people would have heard of the Disney Pixar studio, Brave winning a Golden Globe will put it and animated film in the public consciousness. However, if cinema-goers are impressed by awards, studio-owners are even more enamoured of them. According to Messinger, it's within the industry that the effects of a win are really felt, "When Howl won an Oscar, it put Studio Ghibli on the map and cemented relationships with the Disney studio who distributed it." Rango, 2012's Oscar winner starring Johnny Depp, led to Paramount Pictures announcing a new animation branch. Paramount Animation will be releasing its first animated film, The Spongebob SquarePants Movie 2, in 2014. Peculiarly, Brave's Scottish setting has caused the film to have a significant impact on the country's tourist trade, which may also indirectly benefit from its win at the Globes. While the film was produced in Pixar's Californian studios by an American team, the film is set in Scotland and has a strong British voice cast, including Julie Walters, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly and Robbie Coltrane. Mike Cantlay, Chairman of Scotland's tourism organisation VisitScotland, told The Telegraph that he thought the film would bring in an additional £140 million to the Scottish economy. Footage from Brave was incuded in an August 2012 ad campaign for VisitScotland and the organisation launched a dedicated Brave website at the time of the film's release, complete with nearly 1,000 "Brave travel experience" holiday packages. The glory of winning a gong undeniably adds lustre to the animated films involved - even for Pixar, which has plenty of awards lining its shelves. However, it is no longer true that animated films need a leg-up at the box office: the biggest and best, like Brave, are already enormously popular with film fans. Indeed, the biggest beneficiary since the introduction of dedicated awards has been the animated film industry itself. Specialist categories for animation have meant that at least half a dozen animations a year are discussed in the same breath - and with the same seriousness - as the nominees for the other major awards.