The Art of Ralph Breaks the Internet

KNOWSMORE

Ami Thompson, Art Director, Characters

Knowsmore went through many iterations. We drew him as an owl, a lightbulb, a professor. His final form combined those ideas and was inspired by Maurice Noble, M. Sasek, and the flat, graphic UPA style of the 1950s and ’60s.

Matthias Lechner, Art Director, Environments

Knowsmore.com was initially conceived as an abandoned search engine whose website used to be the biggest on the Internet. It was like a grand college library, with doorways, windows, roof, and interior details that all have a rounded gumdrop shape. Cool, desaturated colors like purple and gold helped emphasize the sad abandoned feeling. In the end it became a booth in the HUB.

SLAUGHTER RACE

<Graffiti: Kevin Nelson / digital>

<Graffiti: Kevin Nelson / digital>

SHANK

Jim Reardon, Director of Story

Shank is a tough, take-no-prisoners woman, and she’s probably the most evolved character in the film! She tells Vanellope to work things out with Ralph.

Ami Thompson, Art Director, Characters

Shank looks intimidating but Vanellope respects her skills. Shank is all about driving so we designed her to look cool doing that: wind blowing through her hair, her tattoo-covered arm on the wheel.

Ami Thompson, Art Director, Characters

Shank and the other Slaughter Race netizens have a design style that is more realistic and less cartoony than the rest of the Internet. They’re roughed up and trashy, designed to look intimidating, even though they’re friendly.

BUZZZTUBE

YESSS

OHMYDISNEY.COM

Mingjue Helen Chen, Associate Production Designer

OhMyDisney is like D23 Expo and a Comic-Con combined, an enormous convention hall where everything is focused on Disney. The exterior looks like Cinderella’s castle, modified to fit the fantastical Internet world of the film. The color palette references the iconic pink and blue. But it’s not a real building with screws and nails; if you were to switch the camera angle you’d see the pieces of it are just floating in space, almost deconstructed.

Cory Loftis, Production Designer

The OhMyDisney characters are like the teenage version of themselves. They are gangly, with bigger heads, feet, and hands. They have a simplified silhouette but are still recognizable as the characters from the films.

Cory Loftis, Production Designer

One of the fun and challenging things with changing the character designs is you understand why the original artists chose certain poses for them. For example, Eeyore’s signature move is dropping his head down, but with the shorter legs and bigger head he has in this film, his head would hit the ground when he’s animated.

Matthias Lechner, Art Director, Environments

The interior is full of booths that highlight Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and so on. The Princess Room is the heavily guarded dressing room of the Disney Royal Court. It’s a behind-the-scenes place where the princesses can hang out. We visited the “Dream Suite” at Disneyland for research.

Kira Lehtomaki, Head of Animation

We met with each of the actresses who voice the princesses. They think about their characters in such a deep way. Jennifer Hale, the voice of Cinderella for the last twenty years, describes Cinderella as “the queen of coping”—she makes the best of anything you throw at her. Jasmine is used to more luxury than Cinderella, but she also fights for what is good and right, she will question authority when she needs to. We try to work those unique personality traits into each of the princesses. They each have their own set of wants, goals, and personalities, and we want that to shine through.

Matthias Lechner, Art Director, Environments

Each princess has her own cubbie filled with personal items: Belle’s books, Mulan’s sword, the picture Tiana ripped out of the magazine, Ariel’s collection of thingamabobs. Some are jokes: Aurora has coffee, Cinderella’s clock is frozen at midnight.

Matthias Lechner, Art Director, Environments

It’s intimidating to make even a small change to one princess, and we had to come up with a new style for each of them. It helped that these aren’t the real princesses from the films, they are Internet versions of those characters.

Ami Thompson, Art Director, Characters

Their casualwear is something they could wear relaxing at home, inspired by Vanellope’s comfortable clothes. Each outfit’s design relates to the Internet version of them.

Mark Henn, Animator

It’s not often an animator gets to revisit a past character; I hadn’t animated Ariel since the original film in 1989. One challenge was trying to find a balance between traditional animation and the digital world of Wreck-It Ralph 2. I animated a few test scenes to show how the new designs could be fully animated for this film while still maintaining the integrity of the original designs. And it was such a treat to host a meet-and-greet discussion for the animation team with each of the voice talents as they came in to record their lines.

Ami Thompson, Art Director, Characters

The OhMyDisney version of the princesses is more cartoony, with bigger eyes and ears, a graphic mouth shape. But we kept the color schemes from their iconic dresses, and maintained something close to their original hairstyles even when they’re in comfy outfits.

NEW FRIENDS

KNOWSMORE

SLAUGHTER RACE

SHANK

BUZZZTUBE

YESSS

OHMYDISNEY.COM