Hello Mammals! Civet back once again, bringing you an exclusive interview, this time with some of Disney’s artists who have been working on Zootopia 2! I was recently able to attend the Lightbox Expo, a fantastic art expo featuring a ton of talented artists. One of the panels was ‘Tails Behind the Art of Zootopia 2″. I’ll be diving more into that panel in a few days, but for now, enjoy the exclusive interview ZNN was able to secure with the two extremely talented artists who gave the presentation: Limei Hshieh, who focused mainly on the environments and building Marsh Market from the ground up, and Griselda (Gris) Sastrwinata, who helped shape the initial sketches as well as dove deep into color tones and how to use those to tell a story through color and lighting.
Civet: Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me! I have several questions that we received from the fans, a lot of whom are extremely talented artists themselves. One question, especially as we introduce new animals into the plot, is this- what is harder to animate, fur or scales?
Limei: Good question! I think it’s equally hard. Each has its own unique and specific challenges.
Gris: Yeah, it’s like comparing apples to oranges, they are both hard in their own unique way!
Civet: Speaking of reptiles, do you have any favorite aspects of Gary?
Limei: He’s so cute! I love him so much!
Gris: His innocence, I think, is what I love about him.
Civet: You got the perfect person to play him for that!
Gris: That’s true!
Civet: One of the more technical artistic questions we had from another artist was, ‘With a setting like Zootopia that has so many different characters and structures of all shapes and sizes, what makes for good scene composition?”
Gris: Showing the scene’s scale. If you look at every set, there’s always a different scale for different animals because that’s one of the things that makes the world different than anything else. If you only have a big door and you don’t have a small door, you’re like, where’s the mouse going to go? How are they going to get in?”
Civet: So everything is composed around the scale of the characters. Interesting! It was mentioned that the sequel was a little bit more cartoony in an animation sense, and with that, did you have favorite characters that you did smear frames for?
Limei: I know that Gary has a lot of that just because of his length.
Gris: I know Gary has that for sure because I see it during color timing. I’ll be working on the color and be thinking, ‘Oh, that’s cool!’
Civet: I don’t know if you have any insight into this, but I know Gary went through multiple iterations before ending up on just a fanny pack. Was that something that you guys just decided to do because it worked best for him?
Gris: It’s the story point because the fanny pack will play a really important role in the movie. And we want to make sure that the audience will clock that as soon as possible.
Civet: I’m going to just pin that then, and we won’t push it anymore!
Limei: (Laughs) Thanks, it’s just for story purposes, that’s what we will say.
Civet: In the trailer, when Mayor Winddancer is counting, is that based on a horse, a real horse (Clever Hans), that they (allegedly) taught to count by tapping its hoof?
Limei: I wouldn’t be surprised.
Gris: I also wouldn’t be surprised if the animators did that because I feel like we all put in our own Easter egg, our own fun quirky things, and that is something they would do!
Civet: Speaking of Easter eggs, that leads into my next question. We know from having talked to Yvette and Carrie back at the ‘Animation is Film Festival’ last week, the movie is just riddled with Easter eggs and things in the background going on, and all that kind of stuff. Was there any specific gag that you guys think, ‘hey, when you’re watching this, look out for this. This specifically is one of my favorite background gags.’
Limei: Oh, there are too many! We did so many graphics for this movie.
Gris: There are tons of Easter eggs in the graphics; there is no way I can pick one. Especially at the Marsh Market.
Civet: What you’re saying is we all will definitely need to buy this movie in 4K and go frame by frame.
Limei: (laughing) Yes, we made sure that things look crisp!
Civet: Thank you both for your time, and we are all looking forward to Nov. 26th and getting to see all your hard work on the big screen!
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