Art of Zootopia (part 3)
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Zootopia (also known as Zootropolis in some countries) is an animation movie produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, and directed by Byron Howard and Rich Moore in 2016. Development of the film that would come to be called Zootopia began when Byron Howard pitched six story ideas to Disney Animation chief creative officer and executive producer John Lasseter, of which three involved animal characters: an all-animal adaptation of The Three Musketeers, a 1960s-themed story about a "mad doctor cat...who turned children into animals", and a "bounty hunter pug in space". The common thread running through these ideas was that Howard wanted to do a film similar to Disney's Robin Hood, which also featured animals in anthropomorphic roles. According to Howard, Zootopia emerged from his desire to create something different from other animal anthropomorphic films, where animals either live in the natural world or in the human world. His concept, in which animals live in a modern world designed by animals for animals, was well received by Lasseter, who responded by embracing and lifting Howard "in the air like a baby Simba". Lasseter suggested that Howard should try combining the 1960s theme with the animal characters, especially the space pug. This led Howard to develop and pitch Savage Seas, an international spy film centered on an arctic hare named "Jack Savage" who was somewhat like James Bond. It was around this time that screenwriter Jared Bush was hired to work on the film; he was excited to work on a spy film because his father and grandfather had worked for the Central Intelligence Agency.
Howard and Bush continued to develop the film with the assistance of the Disney Story Trust, the studio's top creative personnel who meet regularly to review and discuss all projects in development. The most delightful part of the spy film turned out to be its first act, set in a city created by and for animals. To focus on the all-animal city, Howard eventually dropped the 1960s setting, along with the espionage and international aspects, and changed the film into a contemporary police procedural in which Nick Wilde was the lead role and Judy Hopps was essentially his sidekick. For a while, "the filmmakers were very committed" to that version of the story, but then in November 2014, the filmmakers realized the film's plot would be more engaging if they reversed the roles to instead focus on Hopps as opposed to Wilde. The change in perspective involved dropping several characters, including two characters known as "The Gerbil Jerks" who were described as "trust-fund gerbils that had nothing better to do than harass Nick."
Regarding the animation, Disney's most recent work on animating fur was for the titular character of the 2008 film Bolt, but the software they had used at the time was not ready for creating the realistic fur of the animals of Zootopia. Therefore, the studio's IT engineers developed the fur-controlling software "iGroom", which gave character designers precise control over the brushing, shaping, and shading of fur and made it possible to create a variety of eccentric character styles for each animal. The software was also able to control an unseen "imaginary" under-layer that gave fur a degree of plushness not seen before. This feature was used to create characters like Officer Clawhauser, who has a big head that is entirely made of spotted fur. Characters with noteworthy numbers of strands of hair or fur included both of the two lead characters, Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, who each had around 2.5 million hairs; a giraffe with nine million strands of fur; a gerbil with 480,000 strands; and a rodent with more strands of hair than the 400,000 that were on Elsa's head in Frozen. Zootopia was the second time Disney used the Hyperion renderer, which they had first used on Big Hero 6. A new fur paradigm was added to the renderer to facilitate the creation of realistic images of the animals' dense fur. Nitro, a real-time display application developed since the making of Wreck-It Ralph, was used to make the fur more consistent, intact, and subtle much more quickly, as opposed to the previous practice of having to predict how the fur would work while making and looking at silhouettes or poses for the character. The tree-and-plant generator Bonsai, first used in Frozen, was used to make numerous variations of trees with very detailed foliage.
The pictures on this page are a collection of artworks created for this movie.
THE STORY
In a world populated by anthropomorphic mammals, Judy Hopps, a rabbit from rural Bunnyburrow, fulfills her childhood dream of becoming the first rabbit police officer in the city of Zootopia. On her first day at the Zootopia Police Department, Chief Bogo gives Judy parking duty, and during her shift, she is hustled by a con artist duo of foxes, Nick Wilde and Finnick. The next day, she abandons her post to arrest small-time crook Duke Weaselton for stealing a bag of crocus bulbs. Later, while Bogo is reprimanding Judy, Mrs. Otterton visits his office, pleading for someone to find her husband Emmitt, one of 14 missing predators. Without first seeking approval, Judy volunteers, and Bogo is about to fire her for insubordination, but the city's assistant mayor, a sheep named Dawn Bellwether, praises Judy for taking the assignment. Bogo has no choice but to agree, but makes a deal that Judy will resign if she fails to solve the case within 48 hours.
Having ascertained that Nick was the last to see Emmitt, Judy forces him to help her by covertly recording his confession to tax evasion. They track a limousine that picked up Emmitt and find his belongings inside. They learn that the limousine is owned by crime boss Mr. Big, an Arctic shrew whom Nick has a history with. Mr. Big reveals that Emmitt suddenly went "savage" and mindlessly attacked his chauffeur Manchas, a black jaguar. Upon interrogation, Manchas explains that, before attacking him, Emmitt yelled about "Night Howlers". Manchas then suddenly turns savage himself and chases Judy and Nick. Judy traps Manchas and calls the ZPD for help, but Manchas vanishes before they arrive. Bogo demands Judy's resignation, but Nick reminds him that they still have ten hours left to solve the case. While leaving the scene, Nick reveals that as a child, he was bullied by his peers due to their prejudiced beliefs about foxes. At City Hall, Bellwether offers Judy and Nick access to Zootopia's traffic cameras. They discover Manchas was abducted by timberwolves, whom Judy guesses are the Night Howlers. Following the wolves, Judy and Nick locate Emmitt, Manchas, and the other missing predators, who are all "savage" and imprisoned in a hidden asylum. Zootopia's mayor, Leodore Lionheart, ordered their capture and is trying to quietly ascertain the cause of their feral behavior. Lionheart and the asylum staff are soon arrested for false imprisonment, and Bellwether becomes the new mayor…
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