‘Zooptopia 2’ Artists on How They Made Gary De’Snake Empathetic

“Zootopia 2” introduces Gary De’Snake (voiced by Ke Huy Quan), a reptile whose home and community are destroyed by the evil machinations of the lynx family. His heroic actions — along with those of returning protagonists Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) —ultimately foil the villains.

But how do you make a pit viper empathetic?

Production designer Cory Loftis explains that Gary’s design evolved from being intentionally ambiguous — do we trust him? — to feeling instantly sympathetic. Initially, Gary’s eyes were placed more on the sides of his head. “But very quickly, the story started to evolve where it’s like, we want you to love this guy right out of the gate.

So we rotated his eyes to the front of his head so he could look right at you, and you could empathize with him straight away. We rounded his eyes out. We decided not to lose all of the reptileness, so we kept the long vertical pupils, but they’re softened a bit.”

Snakes don’t have eyelids, so Gary’s eyes protrude from the top of his head “more like a frog than a snake,” Loftis says. “So it’s not pure snake anatomy, but we built this thick brow over the top that he could push down onto his eyes to make lid-type shapes.”

As for the village where the snakes once lived, art director Sang Jun Lee proposed that the houses be interconnected to convey a strong, close-knit community. This made their destruction — and the community’s separation — feel all the more devastating. Scale motifs appear throughout both exteriors and interiors. “We made sure the counter heights were all low, because they would sort of slither up to them,” Loftis notes. The tables are curved, with natural scoops for snakes to settle into.

“We also ensured that all the handles on doors and cabinets could be wrapped by a snake’s tail, with 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 there are lots of cushions and poufs for them to curl up on.” Loftis adds that some story artists contributed clever ideas as well, including ensuring that every area had a snake accessible ramp so characters could slide up without bumping over stairs.

“There are slides everywhere so they can move around,” he says. “I have a very inventive art team. They really went to town on the mission and came up with some great ideas.