"In Zootopia, every animal has endless possibilities." Do you miss Judy, Nick, and the rest of Zootopia when you see that? They're coming to us soon! It is reported that the world's first "Crazy Animal City" theme park created by Shanghai Disneyland has recently completed the structural capping, and it is expected to meet with you in 2023!
Since judy and Nick, the protagonists of "Zootopia", have stayed at Disneyland, the number of people who have come to line up for photos is no less than Donald Duck, and the surrounding area is also snatched up by everyone. Why are they so loved by everyone? The small IP takes you to explore the story behind "Zootopia".
Behind the madness is the meticulous production of the team
A unique story theme is a key element of its success. At the beginning of the production, the director team determined that "Zootopia" is a lighthearted and enjoyable family movie, but there will be no freshness in the conventional means of interpretation, so the director took a different approach, taking "prejudice" as the theme of the film and exploring racial discrimination in a modern way.
In order to present the theme perfectly, the team behind the scenes also learns from the "discrimination experts" to understand the root causes of prejudice. At the beginning of the film, Nick is the protagonist, and predators like Nick are put on a "taming collar", and when they get angry, the collar will discharge electric shock to them. Later, the team realized that they were wrong to do this and should not directly show the "prejudice" because the "prejudice" in real life is something that people don't know, and they don't know that what they do will cause so much harm to others. So the production team replaced Judy as the protagonist, using her personal experience to narrate the theme of the story, during which Judy and Nick broke up, the theme was perfectly expressed, and the emotions were also very full.
A strong creative team adds to it. The film took 4 1/2 to 5 years to make, and the creative team numbered 500-550 people, including 10 story teams, who were the core of the team. The team adheres to the concept of "animation serves the story", first carrying out the story, and then letting the animation reflect the story. The story is arranged using diffuse thinking and does not prescribe a story outline. You only need to think about a few good story points when creating, then develop around them, and if you encounter a better story, you will overthrow the previous one and start a new story, so every designer on the team has drawn thousands of drafts of the work. The team's modeling is also top level, the animal hair in the film is no different from the real hair in real life, the furry texture, the roots are clear, who wouldn't want to rub the wool ball of the sheep deputy mayor like Nick?
Real experiences give animation a sense of realism. Before the production, the team went to New York, Las Vegas, Florida Disney Zoo Kingdom to conduct research, and even went to Africa, Kenya and other places to experience the wild life of animals. They studied the color of soil and grasslands, trees, mountains, canyons, plains, clouds, and the trajectory of light. With the addition of experience, the animal city created by the team is like a real existence, with a desert climate of Sahara Square, a perennial cold glacier town, buildings of various sizes, gates, small doors; each animal has a soul and life, large and small animals live together very harmoniously, through the transformation of perspective, with the audience's innermost soul resonance.
The grasp of details makes it even more brilliant. Disney is known for its detail control, and the Easter eggs of Zootopia can't be said for days and nights. For example: Judy's mobile phone logo is "a carrot that was bitten"; Mr. Big's appearance pays tribute to the godfather; Animal City TV changed "CNN" to "ZNN"; the popular diva Shaqi sheep is the Latin American diva Shakira; and also customized news anchors for each country and region, China is a giant panda, North America is an elk, Brazil is a jaguar, Australia is a koala, the United Kingdom is a corgi dog, and so on. After watching these Easter eggs, do you want to re-brush the movie again?
Excellence is the key to their success. The team for Zootopia will conduct countless internal test screenings before the release, after which everyone can make suggestions, and then the core team will spend another three hours discussing which suggestions to use, and then re-revise, basically resetting the film after each test screening. Resetting for a better next time, Zootopia follows Disney's tradition of truthfulness, goodness and beauty, but with a sword-and-arrow approach, reasonably and cleverly describing prejudice and discrimination, let us linger in the "animal utopia" they created.
Do a good job of marketing in advance to seize the opportunity for success. Zootopia was released in 2016, but the team released a fixed date in 2014, began to release posters and trailers in 2015 to attract everyone's attention, and on the eve of the release of the movie, closely followed the hot events and increased marketing efforts. In addition, it also carries out offline linkage with American supermarkets, puts up billboards in China, and so on. Even with the "beast fan" culture enthusiasts online linkage, "beast fans" can post photos of themselves wearing "beast clothes" on the Internet and labeled "crazy animal city", to provide them with posters and movie souvenirs, the wide participation of "beast fans" to help the film and maintain popularity.
What's crazy about Zootopia?
Since its release, the film has taken the world by storm, breaking multiple records in film history and ending with a box office of $1.02 billion. Subsequently, he won six awards in the field of American animation, the Annie Awards for American Animation, which is considered to be the highest award in the field of American animation, and won six awards: Best Animated Feature, Best Character Design, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Dubbing, and Best Animated Storyboard. At the subsequent Oscars, "Zootopia" won the first prize, once again winning the best animated feature award, becoming the big winner of the animated film!
After the Oscar results were announced, the sales of its original book increased by 150% compared with the previous day, and after being introduced into China, it sold 500,000 copies in a month. The Judy and Nick "doujinshi" paintings created by the painters were wildly liked and reprinted, bringing huge traffic to both sides, not only keeping the IP at a constant temperature, but also achieving a leap in the value range of IP and improving their own popularity.
The way to keep ip alive is to launch co-branded products, and the same is true of Zootopia. These include: Guochao brand - Li Ning, Japanese department store brand - bellemaison and so on. Recently, Wuling, a well-known domestic automobile brand, also launched the "Crazy Animal City" limited electric vehicle, which is priced at 59,500 and has a global limited edition of 5,000 units. The cross-dimensional interaction between Wuling and Zootopia brings unlimited possibilities to the IP industry, and the multi-faceted industrial layout makes Zootopia a well-deserved super IP.
Every successful film is inseparable from the efforts of the main creative team behind it, and "Zootopia" is even more so, and the three-way blessing of the story, characters, and team has created such a perfect "Zootopia". The simple plot is not old-fashioned, the gorgeous appearance is full of details, and the appearance of Animal City satisfies everyone's imagination of the animal world and also establishes its own status at Disney!