As you might have noticed, this year we dispense with what has our been our traditional year-in-review Top Ten list (examples here) in order to highlight even more quality deserving content than that stale format allows. The SotW Awards are the result, and last week, after surveying an incredible year's worth of short film picks, we presented our favorite Animation, Live-Action and New Media pieces of 2011.

We honor the best new media short films from a variety of emerging genres and formats like Branded, Crowdfunded, Fan Films, Festival Films, and Interactive Films.

Best Documentary[php]playlist(7788);[/php] With technology giving a platform to hordes of tenacious, DSLR-wielding documentarians, the short doc has never been more popular, or so mind-numbingly repetitive. But, just when you think that every ornery old lady, sensitive "artist" or performer of a single human-pet-trick has had their life digitally preserved in a gauze of shallow depth of field, Sean Dunne comes around to show you how marvelously strange our human species is.

We honor the best animated short films from the past year from a variety of categories including best 3D, Experimental, Stop-Motion, Student and Traditional Animation.