In a world without humans, animals have the same everyday lives as we do: they wear clothes, walk on two legs and trot to work every day. Disney now has almost a hundred years of experience with animals in humanised form as the main characters; “Zoomania” continues this tradition, but this time everything was to be a little different than before.
For example, Disney created the scales of the various species realistically
– which is rarely the case in animated animal films. The enormous differences in size of the animals, from hamsters to elephants, led to interesting ideas in the design of the environment.
Six districts
The “Zoomania” team defined five districts and Judy’s home village to tell the story
Home village: “Sahara Square” consists of real sand dunes and buildings modelled on the
Shape of dunes. Monte Carlo and Dubai were the models for this;
the design is dominated by warm colours such as red, orange and yellow.
“Tundratown” consists mainly of snow and ice, and the colour palette is correspondingly cool
in blue and petrol. Strategically placed neon lights that create reflections and shadow effects
And shadow effects provide a splash of colour in this environment. The Amazonas
Neighbourhood is home to giant, bright green “steam trees” – artificial tree giants
that absorb water from a river and evaporate it as warm, humid air to create a tropical jungle climate. Around half a million trees have been planted for this environment, each with around 30,000 leaves.
Another special feature of this project is the wind simulation technology newly developed by Disney, so that everything in the natural environment and the animals’ skins move realistically. “Savanna Central” is the city centre and transport hub of “Zoomania”. It is home to the Zoomania Police Department (ZPD), the town hall and the bustling main railway station, where Judy arrives by train
arrives by train. Disneyland served as the inspiration for “Savanna Central” – the décor includes water features, acacias and a warm colour palette in shades of orange, grey and olive
Shades of grey and olive-coloured foliage. In “Little Nageria”, the tiny inhabitants of
“Zoomania” live in a miniature city of their own, surrounded by high fences to prevent the big animals from trampling through.
In stark contrast to the bustling districts of the big city is Judy’s rural home village of “Nageria” with its vast meadows, 300 kilometres from the city.
No monkeys
disney created 50 animal species based on real-life models for the film: each species is characterised
each species is characterised by the same features that make it unique in nature. Except that
these animals talk and wear trousers. The team only decided against depicting apes
the team decided against depicting apes because their movement on two legs would have made them look too human-like.
Due to their individual clothing and different looks, there are around 800,000 different unique characters in the film. The Disney team spent 18 months researching the different animal species alone and met with experts around the world, including at Disney Animal Kingdom and Walt Disney World. In addition, the artists spent two weeks on location in Kenya studying the animals of Africa.
Interview with Clark Spencer
Producer Clark Spen cer joined Walt Disney Animation Studios in 1990 and has since produced films such as “Lilo & Stitch” in 1999 and “Ralph Enough’s” in 2012, for which he received the “Producers Guild of America” award for best animated film.
DP: Why was the film title for Germany changed from “Zootopia” to “Zoomania”?
changed?
Clark Spencer: When we were developing the film for the American market, we came up with the
Idea of the name “Zootopia” because the combination of the two words “Zoo” and “Utopia” suggests the idea of a perfect animal world. What we particularly appreciated about the title was that it could be used anywhere in the world because it doesn’t necessarily have to be translated. But then we arrived in the real world with our name idea
and that’s where trade mark protection exists. The term “Zootopia” was protected throughout Europe, and in Germany the word “Zootropolis” was also protected. So our great idea of using one title for the whole world didn’t work. We asked the countries that had these trademark issues to choose a title for the film that represents the name of the city and means something in that country. This is a typical case in my job as a producer: at first we think this is our best idea in a long time, until it finally meets reality with its regulations.
DP: Why was the plot changed during the development of the story?
Clark Spencer: Originally, Nick, with his attitude to life “You will always
you will always be who you are” as the main protagonist. The Judy Rabbit character
was to meet him and increasingly influence him during their journey together.
However, since the introduction of the “Story Trust” process, we have been going through film concepts at Disney up to ten times, hanging up the storyboards again and again and exchanging feedback. And when we realised after the first screenings that the character of the rabbit was better understood, made it easier to access the story and had a better story arc, we went back to the film
and has a better arc, we went back into the development process and looked at how we could
and looked at how we could expand Judy’s arc. There were about five screenings where the fox was the main character until we decided to restructure
the story. So we developed a version where we swapped the roles of the two characters and started with Judy’s story. So suddenly all the connections were in line. I think as a viewer it’s easier to take the side of a protagonist
Side with a protagonist who goes out into the world and acts, rather than sympathising with a character who has already given up. If you meet such a character during the film, you become interested – but it’s difficult to start with such a starting point.
DP: What tools were used for “Zoomania”?
Clark Spencer: Our pipeline consists of over 120 proprietary in-house tools. Of course, we have also integrated commercial tools such as Maya, but they are always equipped with on-the-top technologies. We always look at existing tools on the market, which we then develop further for our purposes. This has always enabled us to achieve new goals – for example, the Hyperion renderer, which was used for the first time in “Big Hero 6” and has now, of course, been used in “Zoomania”. The renderer, which is based on Renderman, added an incredible level of realistic lighting to the film that we’ve never had before.
DP: Disney developed new fur and wind simulation tools especially for “Zoomania”
Tools. The global wind simulation in this form has never been realised before?
Clark Spencer: When we made “Bolt”, there was a shot in which the dog holds its head
out of the window of a moving car. At the time, the team had no
reasonable way to realise this shot. So we used distortion on the fur to give the impression that the fur was moving in the wind, which it wasn’t actually doing. But that only affected one shot in this film,
“Zoomania” had 1,800 of them. Bringing movement into a film is nothing new –
but populating a world like in this film and using wind simulation in such a way
that you understand the shape of the animal’s head, the length of its fur and where the wind
Wind comes from, that’s a whole new level. It would have been great if this new
Technology had been available to us seven years ago for “Bolt”.
DP: How did the fur simulation for “Zoomania” differ from the previous one?
Clark Spencer: Typically you use human hair as a proxy and adjust its colour and shape
its colour and shape. However, we didn’t want to go down this route for “Zoomania”,
because a sheepskin, for example, is very different in texture and behaviour to a tiger
behaviour from that of a tiger. In this respect, we had to go deep into research. The artists studied each strand of hair at a molecular level to understand the thickness and colour and how it sits on the animal. It would certainly have been easier to put the same fur on each animal and adapt it accordingly, but this approach was necessary to achieve the desired realism.
DP: And how well did the combination of “new wind simulation plus individual fur”achieve a realistic look throughout the film?
Clark Spencer: It got complicated when there was clothing over the fur, because that added a new
new level of effect came into play. A complete team was available for this problem
Available for this problem. They took care of the simulation of the clothing so that it didn’t look so strange with fur underneath
didn’t look enormously strange. The different tails also had to be adapted to
to the clothing – and that with so many different animals! We also faced enormous difficulties when it came to the realistic proportions of the animals: this mainly concerned the camera angle – for example in the elephant ice-cream parlour scene with Nick the fox. The result would not have looked good with a classic shot-counter-shot perspective. Shooting both animals so that they looked good and the story was told correctly was very complex. For example, we used the scene with the escalator in which Judy arrives at the railway station in “Zoomania” to demonstrate the scale of the animals: First the giraffe appears in the picture, then the lion and finally a rabbit. This was a very clever positioning for the camera, for example, which emphasised the proportions well.
“Zoomania” is already available on DVD and Blu-Ray and even though the advertising slogan for 3D animated films is almost always: “Fun for young and old”, it actually applies in the case of this Disney film.
You can read the full interview with Clark Spencer in DP issue 02:16.
Archive notice: This article was originally published on 2016-10-27. Links and embedded videos are preserved as part of the historical record.
