‘Zootopia 2’ artist talks about how he made Gary de Snake resonate with him

Zootopia 2 introduces Gary de Snake (voiced by Ke Huy Quan), a reptilian whose home and community are destroyed by the nefarious plot of the Lynx family. His heroic actions, along with those of returning protagonists Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), ultimately thwart the villain.

But how do you make a viper empathetic?

Production designer Corey Loftis explains that Gary’s design evolved from being intentionally ambiguous. Can we trust him?—immediate sympathy. Initially, Gary’s eyes were placed more on the sides of his head. “But soon the story started unfolding and I was like, I want you to love this guy from the beginning.

So we’ve rotated his eyes to the front of his head so he can look straight at you and you can empathize with him right away. We rolled his eyes. I decided not to completely lose the reptilian look, so I kept the long vertical pupils, but softened them a little. ”

Snakes don’t have eyelids, so Gary’s eyes protrude from the top of his head, making him “more like a frog than a snake,” Loftis said. “So this isn’t pure snake anatomy, but we were able to create this thick eyebrow on top and push it down over the eyes to create an eyelid-like shape.”

For the village where snakes once lived, art director Sangjun Lee suggested interconnecting the houses to represent a strong, close-knit community. This made their destruction, and the separation of their communities, feel even more devastating. Scale motifs can be seen throughout both the exterior and interior. “We tried to keep all the counters low because they were creeping up on us,” says Loftis. The table is curved and has a natural rake for the snake to take up residence in.

“We also made sure all the door and cabinet handles had snake tails wrapped around them, and we put pull handles on almost everything,” he says.

“And we really tried to think about where they would sit. Chairs didn’t seem particularly useful, so we had lots of cushions and pouffes for them to curl up on.” Loftis added that some story artists also provided clever ideas, such as making sure all areas had ramps that the snakes could access so the characters could climb the stairs without bumping into them.

“There are slides all over the place so you can move around,” he says. “I have a very creative art team. They actually went to the city on a mission and came up with some great ideas.