Zootropolis 2 creators brought almost 200 characters to the screen for the sequel and drew inspiration from Disney's "incredible legacy," including Jungle Book and Robin Hood

Zootropolis is a thriving, vibrant, colorful world packed full of all sorts of creatures and critters – 178 characters across 67 species in the sequel, to be exact.

"One of the important things about this world of Zootropolis is making it feel like a city where animals live there naturally," Zootropolis 2 producer Yvett Merino tells us when we meet in London to talk about the Disney sequel. "And so we knew we needed to create a lot of animals. We had a lot from the first film that we brought over, but again, we go into new areas, and we go into Marsh Market, where we had to create a whole new set of animals that we didn't have before."

Zootropolis 2 introduces plenty of new species, particularly showcased in this bustling habitat for aquatic animals that includes sea lions, walruses, and more. "A lot of credit goes to our design team, who really just jumped in and started creating these amazing animals, but also our character team, who built these animals and our animators," Merino adds.

The most significant new species to join the fun this time around, though, is reptiles, particularly Ke Huy Quan's adorable pit viper, Gary De'Snake. "They took an appearance that I did on the Stephen Colbert show. They kept my voice and animated Gary the snake over me," Quan says. "So it seemed as if Stephen Colbert was interviewing Gary the snake, but with my voice. I just saw it on Jared's [Bush, co-director] iPhone, and I was fascinated by it. Instantly, I was like, 'Wow, this is a really cool character,' just the way he moved, the facial expressions, the body movement, all of that was fascinating to me. And sure enough, when I went in and started voicing him, I was super excited, but that was the only time I saw an animated version of him. Everything else was just my imagination. There was a poster of him on the wall behind me, and that was it."

The Disney legacy

Of course, two actors who didn't have to rely as much on their imagination were Jason Bateman and Ginnifer Goodwin, who voice our central unlikely buddy cop duo, Nick Wilde the fox and Judy Hopps the bunny, and who both return from the first film.

Bateman, who voices Nick, says the context of the previous movie helped him orient himself in this sprawling universe. "You get a sense of what the tone of the whole thing is, and what your little part in it is. It's an incredible world that they built," he says. "So I had a lot more energy and idea about what the proper color should be for Nick in and amongst all of this."

For the sequel, animation supervisors also attended voice recording sessions with the actors, which developed the collaborative process of bringing these characters to life even further. "I am intimidated by them. I'm awestruck by them," Goodwin, who voices Judy, says. "I feel like they're doing the actual magic stuff, and that you're watching them cast spells in the corner with their pads of paper."

Goodwin got a deeper insight into the animation process this time, too, thanks to this crossover. "The animator was explaining that each one of us, of course, moves our mouths in a unique way, and that affects the sound coming out. But also, we have unique ways that we touch our face, and [move] our eyebrows and wave our hands around, and that all of those things were incorporated into our characters. Which is why I feel like you get flashes of us when you're watching the movie," she explains.

The collaborative technique harkens back to Disney Animation's hand-drawn era and helped evolve the animation in the sequel. "It was something new that we tried. We used to do that many years ago, back in the hand-drawn days," says Merino. "We have the voice actors, and the performance that they give is so important and so great, but the animators are the other side of that acting, because they're the ones that have to move the character, and show the emotion on the face, and translate that voice acting into a movement. Having our animation supervisors connect with the actors who are doing their characters was great, because they were able to talk, and talk about what either Key or Ginny or Jason [Bateman] were thinking when they're portraying these characters, and the animators were able to share what they're thinking. I think it really helped our animation take a step above."

That's not the only way Zootropolis 2 incorporates Disney Animation's storied history, either: you might recognize some similarities between Gary and Nick and some other famous snake and fox characters in the Disney library. "One of the most fun things about working at Disney Animation is it has this incredible legacy," says Jared Bush, co-director and also Walt Disney Animation Studios chief creative officer. "We just celebrated our 100th anniversary. One of the movies that I remember seeing for the first time in theaters that was a Disney movie was Jungle Book. And Jungle Book has an amazing snake character named Kaa, and one of our hand-drawn animators, Eric Goldberg, worked on Kaa and did some early pencil tests, as opposed to CG animation, 2D animation, of Gary in that style. And it was one of the most fun things to see, first off, the personality come to life, but more importantly, how we could then translate that Disney legacy of the snake into our CG world. And it was incredibly fun. Byron [Howard, co-director], one of his favorite movies is Robin Hood. There's a main character who's a fox. That was really, I think, for him, a big inspiration for Nick in this movie, too."

And naturally, just like the first movie, there are plenty of Easter eggs that celebrate the Disney legacy hidden in the film, too. "This is the truth, which I think a lot of people don't realize, we're actually still finding them," says Bush. "So we have hundreds of artists that worked on this movie. And because this is such a playful world, there's things all over this movie that when we like, we're at the premiere, and we go, 'I didn't know that was in this movie. That's hilarious!', and that's great. One of my favorites is from the movie Tangled. There's a frying pan that's really important that Rapunzel holds. That's literally the exact same frying pan that Nick uses to bonk Gary on the head with, and we use the same sound effect from Tangled for that as well." Even the most sharp-eyed viewer might need a few rewatches to catch a fraction of what's tucked away in that extraordinary world.

Zootropolis 2 arrives in UK cinemas this November 28, and it's currently playing in US theaters (titled Zootopia 2). See what else is in store with our guide to all the upcoming Disney movies.