Building An Original

Television animation goes with original material more often than not. Tut the feature versions of cartoons lean toward adaptations and sequels, which makes sense from a commercial point-of-view, since there are large budgets on the line and the chance of a major bomb is ever present.

So it's refreshing when originals get made, be they South Seas adventures centered around ancient myths, or stories about talking animals living in cities. And nice to read about the creation of all that:

... We went to Africa [for research on Zootopia, and we were camping about 30 yards from a watering hole, and we would see during the day, lions would come right in and drink next the gazelle and zebra they normally eat, and there was no funny business.

They would just go about their business, and they would part ways, because they needed something, just like different groups of people living together in cities. People need to work, they need to come to these cities to live, and they have to find ways to get along, so finding those kinds of key things that tied our own experience as human beings to the animal world, that’s where the movie got really deep and clever. ...

The strongest attributes of Zootopia? It works as a mystery with a twist at the end. As a police procedural. As a comedy. And as an allegory about life in the twenty-first century. Beyond all that, the visuals and characters are astounding.