Zootopia will be charging into theaters nationwide on March 4, and given all of the incredible footage I’ve already seen from this movie, and the early access I was given to see how this amazing film came together, I am beyond excited to see it. It is a great animal movie following in the footsteps of films like Bolt, Robin Hood and The Rescuers, updated for a new generation with animation like you’ve never seen. Zootopia is a movie that takes place in an animal world. This world is not populated by humans–just animals. These animals live, work and have families similar to humans but maintain some of their basic animal qualities and instincts.
Four years in the making, a lot more went into bringing this film to life than just figuring out what the animals would look like, picking out their clothes and deciding on the story. Back in December, I wrote about the creative process from storyboards to what you see on the big screen, but beyond that process, so much else must be determined. (Click here to read about the creative process.)
Filmmakers had to research the animals in the film and how they live in “real life.” Are they nocturnal? Do they live in a burrow? What shapes are they surrounded by in their natural environment. These very questions helped environmental design artists come up with the look and feel of the habitats each animal group would live in. The goal was to create environments that felt like they could be real and organic with things like buildings and homes, dirt, plants and shapes that felt livable and lived in.
Zootopia concept art by – Matthias Lechner (Art Director, Environments). ©2015 Disney. All Rights Reserved.
The character art director and supervisor and their team were tasked with turning the metropolis of of Zootopia and its neighboring towns into environments teaming with different species from around the globe. Variety was crucial, with the hope that viewers would have a “Welcome to Jurassic Park” moment when they first saw the scope of animals represented in the film. They started by creating a sampling of the different species that would be in the film. These characters were then used to start understanding to the difficulties of having all of these species living together in the same world. Just imagine having to design a society that fits the needs of a tiny mouse and a giraffe walking upright on two legs? Daunting, right? In spite of the difficulty, the team chose to go with the real-life size of animals. It would take 97 little mice standing on top of one another to reach the height of a giraffe. Talk about a size difference!
Concept art for Zootopia at the film’s production headquarters
Size difference is much more than how the animals dress or relate to one another–it even informs the types of cars they drive or how they enter and exit a building or public transportation. Size difference also meant that filmmakers needed to cognizant of the point of view of the film’s two main characters, Nick and Judy–a fox and a rabbit–as audiences will be seeing about 90% of the film from their perspective. In a normal “human movie,” filmmakers wouldn’t be concerned with the legs of other animals (characters) or the floor, but in Zootopia, when two of the film’s main characters are knee- or waist-height with some of their “co-stars” those are aspects of the film that will be seen a lot.
Everything in Zootopia had to be scaled to meet the needs of different sized animals.
These are but just some of the challenges that the character development team faced. They also had to select the right animals for each of the areas of Zootopia–from tundra animals to desert animals to rodents; male, female and child versions of characters; clothing and so on. Think of live action films and how every “extra” looks different. Now imagine having to create that look with multiple species thousands of times throughout a film. It’s truly quite incredible.
I can’t wait to see Zootopia! The music and animation that I’ve already heard and seen are truly exceptional and I know it will be a hit with adults and kids alike. I will have more on the movie and a review prior to it coming on in March!
