To the list of classic dialogue from Disney movies, add this conversation between a beaver and a walrus from “Zootopia 2.”
It goes like this: “Hey, bub,” followed by the reply, “Hey, bub,” followed by yet another “Hey, bub,” and so on, and so on.
The lines are minimalistic, but the sequence featuring Nibbles Maplestick, a podcasting beaver, and Russ, a walrus who is also a plumber, has audiences for the sequel to 2016’s Oscar-winning “Zootopia” laughing like … well, hyenas, maybe?
In a cast filled with well-known performers, comedian Fortune Feimster plays the resourceful Nibbles, but a newcomer to voice acting provides the deep, slightly sluggish voice of Russ.
Meet David VanTuyle, an artist originally from Tecumseh in Lenawee County. He is the walrus.
VanTuyle had an important role in the making of “Zootopia 2” as the co-head of story and a storyboard artist. For early screenings done internally for the studio, he filled in as the voice of Russ.
“I thought it was always a temporary thing,” he recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh yeah, this will get replaced someday by Seth Rogen or somebody super funny.’”
It turns out writer and co-director Jared Bush thought VanTuyle’s delivery as the aquatic creature was quite funny. So did audiences who saw the early version of the “Hey, bub” scene.
VanTuyle wound up doing the walrus voice for the final version of the movie, which just might make the tusk, whiskered, somewhat dopey and pleasingly rotund character a star. As SlashFilm noted in its review of “Zootopia 2,” Russ the walrus “is destined for fan-favorite status.”
Directed by Bush and Byron Howard, “Zootopia 2” brings back the franchise’s original heroes — rookie police officers Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin), a rabbit dedicated to fighting crime, and Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), a fox who’s a reformed con artist — and sends them on a dangerous mission involving the arrival of Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan), who, like all reptiles, is considered an outcast in the all-mammal metropolis of Zootopia.
Other characters include returning favorites like the formidable Cape buffalo Chief Bogo (Idris Elba) and dazzling pop singer Gazelle (Shakira) and newcomers like Pawbert Lynxley (Andy Samberg), quokka therapist Dr. Fuzzby (Quinta Brunson) and Nibbles, who aids Judy and Nick in their quest to find Gary after he disrupts the city’s centennial gala to insist that snakes aren’t bad and then flees.
For VanTuyle, working on “Zootopia 2” is another chapter in a dream that started when his grandmother took him to see “The Little Mermaid” at a theater in Clinton, Michigan.
“I was always drawing and always wanted to work at Disney,” he says, adding that he didn’t know whether such a career was possible, “especially coming from Michigan,” so far away from Hollywood.
VanTuyle studied art for a semester at Eastern Michigan University, then switched to Kendall College of Art and Design in Grand Rapids, where he majored in 2D animation and minored in illustration.
During his college years, he went to California for an internship with Disney Parks, the company’s theme park division, and remembers his first time entering the Disney animation building. “It’s just so magical. … It’s just full of creativity and full of people wanting to teach you and learn from each other,” he recalls.
After moving first to New York City and then to the Los Angeles area, VanTuyle’s first big animation project was as a storyboard artist for Nickelodeon’s “Wallykazam!” series. He earned an Emmy nomination for the show’s title sequence.
From there, he moved on to Dreamworks and then to Disney, where he started out working on the Disney+ venture “Big Hero Six: The Series” and a “Monsters Inc.” spin-off show, “Monsters at Work.” He’s now a part of Disney’s feature film division, and his credits as an artist there include 2021’s “Raya and the Last Dragon” and “Encanto” and 2024’s “Moana 2.”
VanTuyle says he enjoyed his dual “Zootopia 2” jobs as a storyboard artist and co-head of story, two sharply different roles in the filmmaking process.
Storyboarding, he explains, requires asking many questions of writers and directors to figure out the tone of each scene and what the characters will be doing in it and then “visualizing what will be seen on-screen” with drawings that serve as blueprints of sorts for the animation team.
“You start to visualize each shot. So you start to draw what are Nick and Judy doing in this sequence … the acting, the poses, how each shot would cut together,” he explains.
As the co-head of story, VanTuyle (working with head of story Carrie Liao) was involved with assigning scenes to storyboard artists and overseeing things to make sure everyone was on the right track. He says it was a pleasure to collaborate with a world-class team of artists in what was, at times, a brainstorming session.
Says VanTuyle: “We did a thing called story jams, which was we would get everybody in a room and just start to build on ideas. Somebody would throw out an idea, and we’d go, “‘Oh, that would be cool — what if we take that and try this with it?’ … [The directors] Jared and Byron were really open to that kind of open process of storyboarding, which helped with a lot of the gags and stuff in the movie.” One of the scenes for which VanTuyle was a storyboard artist has a character entering an outdoor maze of shrubs, a nod to Jack Nicholson’s big finale in “The Shining” that will tickle parents.
VanTuyle says he is still amazed whenever he tells people what he does for a living. “It’s still something that sounds so surreal when I say it out loud. I can’t believe I’m doing this.”
Being the voice of a walrus is like icing on the cake. Is there a future for Russ in other Disney movies? VanTuyle laughs as he admits that the topic did come up at the “Zootopia 2” red-carpet premiere.
”I was onstage with Raymond Persi, who’s the voice of Flash the sloth, and he was just like, ‘We need to do a spin-off thing with Russ and Flash.’” Adds VanTuyle, “I would love to see something like that. Fingers crossed!”
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.
‘Zootopia 2’
Rated PG; action, violence, rude humor
1 hour, 48 minutes
In theaters
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How a Michigander became the unlikely voice of a ‘Zootopia 2’ character
Reporting by Julie Hinds, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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