Disney Infinity 3.0 Zootopia Design Process Preview

Posted on February 24, 2016 by Roger Palmer

Ahead of the release of the new Zootopia Disney Infinity 3.0 figures, Nick Wilde & Judy Hopps, TechInsider spoke with Disney and got a look at the design process.

Disney Infinity’s vice president of art development Jeff Bunker said “Work on the “Zootopia” lead characters began over a year ago”.

As many as 20 people worked to create both the physical toy figurine and in-game characters for Nick and Judy. Six or seven individuals create concept artwork and sculptures. A team of engineers made up of another four to five people prep the sculptures for manufacturing. While the physical toys are configured, a team consisting of a game designer, animators, and programmers work to implement the animation into the game.

“If we’re doing an older vault character — or classic character — we’ll just watch their past film and really get steeped in their personality and understand how they move,” explains Bunker of the research process. “If it’s a new character, we just get as much reference as we can from the filmmakers and talk to them a lot about what their vision is for what the character will be.”

The design team also worked with “Zootopia” filmmakers Rich Moore and Byron Howard throughout the entire process.

“We find the most appealing caricature that captures the essence of that character. When we get something that we really like, we send that back to the filmmakers and we get their feedback,” says Bunker. “In a movie like ‘Zootopia’ we haven’t seen that film before because it’s not made yet, so we have to depend on them [the Disney animators] to share with us what the personality is and how that character moves and how that character may pose for the figure. We’re very dependent on them to guide us.”

Here is a look at the figures in their 3D prototype form:

Here is a look at the concept art for these figures: