‘Zootopia 2’ Artists on How They Made Gary De’Snake Empathetic by Softening His Eyes and Adding a Brow

“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…