Disney Zootopia Interview with Animators Renato dos Anjos + Chad Sellers

Zootopia In-Home Global Press Event: Animators Renato dos Anjos + Chad Sellers

In a film like Zootopia, the complexity comes from the vast number of species they wanted to include. They said it’s a challenge, but a challenge in a good way. They look for references and research in all of their films of the past and films of their childhood, like Robinhood, for example. While Renato loved the animation of it, and it was one of his favorite childhood films, he wanted something original and new. One of the places they looked to for research was a local animal rescue where they were able to study a fox, and it was the first time he saw a fox in person.They then went to Africa to spend 11 days on a safari studying animals in their natural environment. Renato said once they got there, his perception for what the movie could be really changed.

Just from seeing this animal kind of behave normally and without restrictions. They really act differently. There’s a certain kind of strange kind of peace to everything. There’s babies everywhere and they’re always taking care of their own.
I was really expecting not that much to change in my perception, so when I got back to the studio, everybody was working on different tests and fresh out of the airplane, it just took off, just led me off for some reason because we were just there. You see things. A good example for me was this elephant that kind of passed us by. There was several of them, but this one got really close to the truck and then kind of walked off.

It was a very gentle kind of sway to the movement of the head and the way it was just kind of grazing and when I was working on an elephant test— it just didn’t really quite look like that, so we worked really hard on trying to get that spirit of that movement because they’re animals even though they’re on two legs, they were also like, bipedal animals. We wanted them to feel like what we see in the wild, so this is actually the first test that I felt that we saw something that looked similar to what we were seeing in Africa.

Chad said they worked really hard at trying to figure out what was specific to each animal, the qualities, the characteristics, that are right for each animal.

We were trying to figure out these animal traits that sort of sell that animal; this was a constant thing, and we just wanted to make sure we got the animal behavior, so looking at the way this moose eats, and we have our characters up on two legs, but if we were to do a test with that, basically what we wanted to try to do and we found that if we have the hands static, which humans bring the food to our mouths. That’s how we eat, but the animals always go towards the food, and just that subtle little thing made it feel more animal like. Just that behavioral thing was a constant thing we looked for. Bears can’t really scratch their own back, so of course, they use the tree, so we wanted to find fun moments to actually put in the film.

They talked about how all of the animals they researched had theses very unique qualities and many of those made it into the film. The wildebeest aren’t very bright. They will just walk and walk and follow each other. They cross a river, and no one really knows why (I’ve actually seen it firsthand) and the zebras will wait to see if the wildebeest make it across before they follow suit. There’s a scene in Zootopia where the wildebeest are waiting to cross the street at the crosswalk that is a similar scenario.

ZOOTOPIA – Character Concept Art of Nick Wilde by Cory Loftis (Character Design Supervisor). ©2015 Disney. All Rights Reserved.

When they studied the fox for Nick Wilde they did a lot of tests with how foxes act with their yawning and body language. Foxes are very flexible and very animated in the face, so they tried to work with that and spent a lot of time studying those behaviors and facial motions.

ZOOTOPIA – Character Concept Art of Judy Hopps by Cory Loftis (Character Design Supervisor). ©2015 Disney. All Rights Reserved.

With Judy Hopps, they spent a lot of time studying bunnies and bunny behavior to work in some of the bunny behaviors into her character. Renato said some of the animators actually brought in rabbits to the office to help study rabbit movements for their animations. Did you know when bunnies play or fight they do something called binking? It’s one of the most notable ways rabbits communicate and they kick their feet and jump about. The animators thought that would be a great way to incorporate some of the real bunny behaviors into Judy’s character. So in scene’s when Judy is threatened or on high alert, you’ll see her binking in the movie.

ZOOTOPIA – Pictured; Yax. ©2016 Disney. All Rights Reserved.

Renato said that sometimes the animals and characters aren’t ones that they research from the beginning. Sometimes they are late adds, like the Yak. He had to be built to fill a gap, and he’s a big part of the story. The Yak is a very specific character created to fill a gap in the story. Or Mr. Big, the elephant shrew. He was added pretty late, as well. Chad said that doing the research for Mr. Big didn’t feel like work at all. They had an Italian lunch party, watched a few mob films, and talked about Italian gesturing and talking with hands. We joked they may have even crashed a few Italian weddings.

Zootopia In-Home Global Press Event

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I’ve been invited on an all expense paid trip to LA courtesy of Disney. As always, all opinions are my own.