Film has always been a collaborative artform but the computer seems to be the great unifier these days. Is there any contribution that isn't tweaked these days in post? Maybe costumes? It's hard to know where the disciplines of stunt work, visual effects, performance capture, animation, prop and makeup effects begin and end these days but that's all right. It's always been hard to separate the film disciplines. A great many art direction nominations have happened because a cinematographer maximized the beauty of the sets and so on. What matters is that everything works in harmony to serve the movie.
We haven't really discussed The Adventures of Tintin and I'd love to hear your opinion. I was continually startled by the dense complexity of the imagery and effects but I also found the movie utterly exhausting, the movie equivalent of certain film scores by certain uh composers that begin with a climax and climax in each and every scene. I like a little more contours of beginning, middle and crescendo endings. But I had to credit its technical marvels somewhere.
My personal ballots for Visual Effects, Animated Feature and Makeup ... (the latter of which I treat more like Bafta and less like Oscar, considering hair and non-fx based makeup as well)
The Skin I Live In, Rango, The Tree of Life, Captain America: The First Avenger, Rise of the Planet of the Apes