Renato dos Anjos is a Brazilian animator, currently working at Walt Disney Animation Studios as the head of animation. He previously worked at Sony Pictures Animation/Imageworks on The ChubbChubbs, The Polar Express, Open Season and Surf’s Up. Chad Sellers was born on November 8, 1982 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He is known for his work on Frozen (2013), Wreck-It Ralph (2012) and Tangled (2010).
It’s always interesting to me to learn how the animators do their jobs and the inspiration that they pull from. My son, who is now 12, has a big interest in becoming an animator so I love getting the chance to see how this dream became a reality. Renato told us how he started at age 14 and how a family friend gave him his first shot. He was working for another studio when he heard about a position at Pixar and the rest is history.
Chas explained to us that he didn’t know he even wanted to be an animator. He said that if it wasn’t for wasn’t for computers, he doesn’t even know if he’d be an animator. In school he didn’t really specialize in anything. It wasn’t until after college where he decided that animation was where he wanted to focus.
As far as making Zootopia, the first thing they had to figure out before animating the characters was how each of the real-life counterparts moved so they could make them as realistic on the screen as in real life. They went to an animal rescue and got to see a fox in person, and got to see how they act and even down to the way the hair moved on the body as the wind blew. All of this is important to developing characters with realistic animal movements.
They actually went to Kenya to see the animals in their natural habitat and to see how they interact with one another. One story in particular, was about the wildebeest, “not the smartest animals,” and how they would just wait for something to happen, and then they just follow as they go across the river, some not making it fully across. The zebras would wait to see who made it across or didn’t and then run when they saw that it was clear. There is a scene in the movie where the wildebeest are crossing the street that is inspired by real-life and what they saw in Kenya. They wanted to capture this funny little behavior.
Upon arriving back home in the states Renato explained how differently things looked, “I was really expecting not that much to change in my perception, so when I got back to the studio … everything that I saw, it just looked off. You see things. A good example for me was this elephant that kind of passed us by, there was several of them, but this one got really close to the truck and then kind of walked off. It was a very gentle kind of like, sway to the movement of the head and the way it was just kind of grazing and when I was working on an elephant test, it just didn’t really quite look like that, so we worked really hard on trying to get that, that spirit of that movement because they’re animals, even though they’re on two legs, they were also bipedal animals. Looking at this, the elephant looks like an elephant. The giraffe looks like a giraffe and Nick Fox looks like a fox, although they’re walking on two legs, it just felt really unique to their species.”
Chad added, “We were just kind of trying to figure out, again, what makes each animal specific to that animal, and ways that we can make our characters feel that way and these animal traits that sort of sell that animal. This was something like a constant thing and we just wanted to make sure we got the animal behavior, so like looking at the way this moose eats. Humans bring the food to our mouths. That’s how we eat, but the animals always go towards the food and just that subtle little thing made it feel more animal like. Just that behavioral thing was a constant thing we looked for.”
Another animal that caught their attention in Kenya were the cave buffalo and how they will stare you down. They just lock onto you with a feeling that they are saying “what are you looking at?” They captured this with the character Chief Bogo.
They also studied the cheetah, the way a real cheetah runs and moves. In the movie, we have Clawhauser, who isn’t in the best shape as a real cheetah but they wanted to capture the real shape and body language that they have, like when they lock onto their prey. Chad elaborated, “Because they’re running so fast, they have a built in stabilization in their heads so they can focus while running at high speeds like that, so it’s again, it’s the tiny little things that we wanted to pepper in to maintain the animal behavior and then of course, we get the voice of the character, we want to try see how it works with the design, so we’ll do like, a dialogue test, the animation dialogue test and the supervisor of Clawhauser.”
To make sure the animals in the film were animated as closely to the way they behave in real life, some of the animators actually adopted rabbits and they would bring them into work every once and awhile so each department could see them. This way they could give Judy Hopps as much animal behavior as they could versus human characteristics.
Chad: You probably have seen bunnies do this, but they do it when they play or when they fight, but they sort of like, jump up and kick their feet out kind of all crazy. So we thought, well, if she had to like do something where she opened a door, how can she do it like a rabbit which is thinking would be a good way to do it?
Renato: We came to this one place for Judy, for instance, if she is on high alert or she’s threatened, she becomes a little bit more like a rabbit and then she backs off of that and becomes more herself.
The animation process is an intense one, and the Renato explained that you get very attached to the process and the characters. “When the movie is finished it gives you this really amazing sense of accomplishment and pride. It’s pretty amazing.”
Chad: Along the way, each department, each artist adds their magic and it goes through everybody and everybody touches it. It’s like, you really feel like the family that created this thing. Everybody did their part and everybody’s like a master at what they do and just, at the end, it’s like, super rewarding to see people like it so much.
In case you were wondering, (we were) Mr. Big is an elephant shrew. Chad said that he did his research for the part by watching a bunch of mobster films and having Italian-American animators bring in real Italian family dishes to prepare. Stay tuned to a future post to hear me voice Mr. Big’s daughter Frou Frou.
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Dianna Ranere