[the_ad id=”3280664″]

“It’s the biggest movie we’ve ever done in the history of Disney animation, which is saying something. Just the variety of characters, and not just with fur but characters with fur and costumes. We’ve got one shot that features 50,000 animals on the screen at the same time!”

— Director Byron Howard

For those of us of a certain age (or kids with cool parents) who grew up with works like Richard Scarry’s cherished children’s books depicting a colorful cast of anthropomorphic animals living in Busytown, 2016’s animated sensation Zootopia was a nostalgic dream made manifest.

Even though it’s been nine years since Disney’s Oscar-winning hit helmed by Byron Howard and Rich Moore (from a script by Jared Bush and Phil Johnson) took audiences by storm with its Noah’s Ark-sized menagerie of cohabitating critters, we’re still in awe of its indelible world.

Now, the Academy Award-winning directing duo of Howard and Bush (Encanto), this time with acclaimed producer Yvett Merino (Moana 2, Big Hero 6), are back delivering the “wow factor” with Zootopia 2. Walt Disney Animation Studios’ $150-million sequel follows plucky bunny detective Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) as she partners with the sly red fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) for an undercover case to locate a mysterious blue serpent named Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan), who’s been stirring up trouble in Zootopia.

“Something we wanted to do heading into this story is make sure we knew not just what we’re excited about, but what’s everybody else excited about,” Jared Bush, the film’s co-director and Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios, tells Animation Magazine. “Now that we understand this world of animals, what else is out there and what’s the most interesting way to show that? The movie feels more expansive. It’s unbelievably beautiful because we have the luxury of working with the greatest artists on the planet; people at the top of their craft wanting to push what’s possible.”

Carnival of Animals

Zootopia 2 is filled to the max with frolicking fauna. Bush believes the film includes by far the most speaking parts of any Disney movie ever, nearing an astonishing 70 roles.

“We’re all animal nerds,” adds Bush. “We love animals. One of the really fun things is, who along the way can Nick and Judy run into that will be entertaining for their relationship and push up against them?”

There’s a measurable leap in the animation quality here too, thanks to Pixar’s Presto 3D software, and the fun flick is sure to be one of the brightest spots on Hollywood’s holiday season calendar. Conjuring up the magic of Zootopia 2 required an all-out group effort.

“Every week, we’re shocked and amazed at what they can produce,” Howard adds. “The movie is absolutely enormous. It’s the biggest movie we’ve ever done in the history of Disney animation, which is saying something. The first movie was complex and layered and immersive, and this one is even more so. Everyone has just stepped it up. The artistry is mind-boggling.”

“I think we all have an old-fashioned sensibility while we’re telling these movies in modern times. There’s a math to some of these things sometimes, comedy specifically.”

— Director Jared Bush (CCO, Walt Disney Animation Studios)

Merino notes that one of the benefits of working at Walt Disney Animation is that the studio works with the same team on every project, so it really is a brain trust coming together and doing its best.

“They all work so hard here and they’re such amazing artists,” the Encanto Oscar winner says. “It really is the best of the best doing what they do. Our job is to guide them and give them what they need to do it, and then they just go.”

Burrowing into Zootopia’s vibrant world, the talented animation crew steered the narrative into some unexplored corners of the bustling metropolis.

Heads Above the Water

“One of the most exciting new areas we get to visit is called Marsh Market,” Howard shares. “This is a part of town made for semiaquatic and marine animals. We didn’t get to see that neighborhood in the first film. There’s no human-world equivalent to the way that animals live there. You go to Tundratown, which is where it’s cold and you wear a coat. Or if you go to Sahara Square and you know it’s going to feel hot, so you know what to do there. But an environment where animals live equally above and below water needs to go back and forth seamlessly. Knowing this is a place the animals built for themselves, it’s almost an alien world.”

“There’s conveyor belts that take them in and out of the water,” he adds. “There are buildings that are below water, above water; there are swim-up bars. All kinds of things where it’s tailor-made for animals that are in the water. Which is great for Nick and Judy, because they haven’t spent time there. In the first film, Nick was somewhat the ambassador of the city to Judy, so he could show her all the places he knew. He’s never been to this spot before and it’s definitely not designed for land animals, so it really puts them at a disadvantage, which gives us a lot of fun discomfort.”

Bush compares this whimsical realm to being a kid and imagining what an animal world might be like, and those types of crazy drawings or wild ideas that daydreaming youth often indulge in. “The transport tubes, [which] are such a big part of what the story is this time around, make sense if you’re a seal or a walrus or a hippo getting shot through those things,” he explains. “It’s the perfect way to get from one part of town to the other. The storytelling itself and the world begs you to have fun and really go next level and do things that are so imaginative.”

“The Jungle Book is the first Disney movie I remember seeing in theaters and it stuck with me forever,” says Bush. “The really fun characters and the music, that was what made me want to be a part of this. There’s a reason why Disney has this great legacy, and we did try to learn from that. I think we all have an old-fashioned sensibility while we’re telling these movies in modern times. There’s a math to some of these things sometimes, comedy specifically. Ingredients you need to set up correctly in order for jokes to pay off that hopefully everyone in the world will like.”

Presto Perfection

Part of the remarkable magic of Zootopia 2 is due to the move from Maya animation software to the upgraded Presto system, and the results are nothing less than stunning, with enhanced depth of field, color palette, lighting effects, fur texturing and reflective surfaces. Presto’s advanced features also allowed for cross-departmental conversations and synchronous troubleshooting.

“A lot of credit goes to our animation team, who really jumped in and accepted Presto changes,” Merino recalls. “It’s not always easy to change and switch a system they’re all used to. We were able to cast and work on different characters within the same scene because we could go in and out of those sequences. It was really a great help to us.”

Presto’s fluid functions were necessary for a project of this magnitude, permitting animators to work concurrently, a benefit the team didn’t have using the older Maya systems. “That was something we genuinely needed because the complexity is unprecedented,” claims Howard. “Just the variety of characters, and not just with fur but characters with fur and costumes. We’ve got one shot that features 50,000 animals on the screen at the same time!

“Gary De’Snake himself is a new thing. We have a great tradition of animated snakes at Disney, but we hadn’t done one in CG, so that’s brand new for us. I just love looking at Gary, that beautiful blue color that Cory Loftis, our production designer, found. And Ke’s voice and how distinctive that is. It’s all about these tools becoming more user-friendly and more flexible and faster. Being able to handle something of this scale, we couldn’t have done that five years ago.”

Disney will release Zootopia 2 in theaters nationwide on November 26.

Global Expansion

Disney is banking on Zootopia 2 being a major draw when it opens Thanksgiving weekend. Broadening the borders of this fascinating animal society only seemed natural after laying the foundation of Judy and Nick’s relationship in 2016’s Zootopia.

“I started in the ’90s in animation, where Disney was kind of the only game in town, and then there was DreamWorks for a while,” co-director Jared Bush notes. “It’s global now, and a lot of people who are going to these films grew up on very sophisticated-looking animation with a lot of cinematography and very complex rendering systems, so that expectation is there. But there’s also an awareness of world animation. Different styles, different treatments and different storytelling, which is great because we have a diverse crew that wants that stuff for us as well.”

Disney’s troop of ace animators have left it all on the drawing table and computer screens for this extraordinary sequel that revisits detectives Hopps and Wilde as they venture into a swampy corner of Zootopia to track down a sneaky snake named Gary.

“We have this luxury of all the brilliant brains that we’re surrounded with constantly,” co-director Byron Howard adds. “Everybody that touches any of the movies that we put out here wants to make something that’s going to stand the test of time. They want to contribute to something they can tell their family about and be proud of. That’s not just a movie for right now, but 10 years from now will still entertain people. Everyone is wanting these stories to be the most emotional they can be, the most fun they can be. We’re constantly being inspired by those around us.”