From gnus to shrews, lemmings to leopards, rabbits to rhinos, Zootopia is home to animals of all shapes, sizes, stripes and spots. Creating each character requires the inventiveness of artists throughout the production disciplines, especially when Zootopia features over a 1,000 unique animals. Art Director of Characters, Cory Loftis, showed us how Disney character design and appeal merged with revolutionary work in Look and Simulation. He also shared 3 main challenges they overcame when creating the Citizens of Zootopia…
Making sure the animals were to scale
It was important for them to to represent a realistic scale of animals so the challenge was figuring out a way to make that happen given that there would be scenes where there would be large and small animals together.
Creating Unique characters
Each and every citizen of Zootopia (animals) was made to look different, the same way every human looks different. That meant making sure each animal had a unique look (including their clothes). I assume the real challenge was that there were 1000 animals in Zootopia, which meant finding a way to make 1000 different (yet similar) characters.
Clothing
Each animal wears clothing and walks on 2 legs, so designing pants for each type of animal created a challenge because it had to make sense. That is why the sheep in Zootopia wear Jeggings, that way it fits their wool.
Cory will also gave us a hands-on drawing demonstration…How do you think I did?
…don’t answer that.
Zootopia opens in theaters everywhere on March 4th!
The modern mammal metropolis of Zootopia is a city like no other. Comprised of habitat neighborhoods like ritzy Sahara Square and frigid Tundratown, it’s a melting pot where animals from every environment live together—a place where no matter what you are, from the biggest elephant to the smallest shrew, you can be anything. But when rookie Officer Judy Hopps (voice of Ginnifer Goodwin) arrives, she discovers that being the first bunny on a police force of big, tough animals isn’t so easy. Determined to prove herself, she jumps at the opportunity to crack a case, even if it means partnering with a fast-talking, scam-artist fox, Nick Wilde (voice of Jason Bateman), to solve the mystery.
*Thank you for the images Disney!
