Stop-motion animation legend Andy Gent, who teamed-up with Wes Anderson on Fantastic Mr. Fox and Isle of Dogs, also worked on The Humane Society’s campaign and short film Save Ralph. It’s about a rabbit who’s a tester for cosmetics. Through Taika Waititi’s voice work as the title character, and the animation work from Gent and his team, the campaign to eliminate animal cosmetics testing has already been quite effective. The short is also one of the 15 finalists for the 2023 Best Animated Short Film Academy Award. Gent and I talk about Save Ralph and his upcoming Anderson collaborations. (This Animation Scoop Q&A was edited for length and clarity.)

Andy Gent: It’s very exciting. We were very pleased to hear that it was going to make it to that stage.

Jackson Murphy: This short and campaign have been around for a little bit. How did you first get involved with The Humane Society on this?

AG: I was asked a couple years ago if I was interested in making a character for them. I liked the idea. I loved the proposal. Initially, it was just to do that one character. And then as we got into it and I met Spencer [Susser, the director] and went through what his idea was for the film, I didn’t really want to let go of any of it. I wanted to build everything. So we designed and built Ralph and one of the worlds he lived in. It was a big struggle but it was super-tight, financially, to make it, and we really wanted it to be such a beautiful thing. We did it part-time between all the other projects we were doing. It took us a year to build it and film it. Everybody was working sort of voluntarily to try and help out… so we were at the mercy of everybody’s schedules. It was slow, even for animation. I decided to just keep going and build every part of it.

We filmed it in my studio in London. I’m pleased with it. The end result was that we could keep it all very consistent and help make all the parts lovely and give [Ralph] the best shot he could have. He’s now quite a sizable star. He’s probably one of the most viewed things we’ve ever had the privilege of being involved with.

JM: All your hard work has paid off. There are so many details that go into the kitchen, the living room and the bathroom.

AG: He’s the latest one of generations and generations of rabbits that have lived in the same place. It’s an imaginary place. In his head, this is home. But in actual fact, it’s a cage in a laboratory. He’s seeing all the old toothbrushes from the rabbits that were there before… all the magazines and all the stuff that was in there. And it’s slightly period… bits and pieces. He’s lived there and telling the tale of everything that’s come before. The levels of details are true. There’s so much to see. You can review it and watch it and watch it. With it being [four] minutes, it’s quite impactful as well. You can really invest a lot in it with every scene to make all those things worthwhile.

It was a really lovely thing to work on. During the process, it was over such a long period and so many people were generous with their time. We got a voiceover and another voiceover — these amazing people involved with it, Taika [Waititi], Zac [Efron] and Ricky Gervais. You’ve got all of these amazing people generously giving their time. We knew it was going to be a fun thing to work on, from the premise, but it got more and more exciting as we were building it and shooting it. Tobias Fouracre did an amazing job with the animation. The lighting was spectacular. It was a really joyful thing to be a part of.

JM: Great. And you can really connect with Ralph because he’s staring directly into the camera often.

AG: Like a documentary. He can tilt and move around. There’s one shot Tobias did where he’s shooting over the shoulder of Ralph in the mirror in the bathroom. He’s shooting it from behind the puppet, animating the reflection, which was technically very difficult on a small set. And Tobias isn’t the littlest person you’ve ever met. He’s quite a big, tall guy. An amazing shot. When he’s talking, there’s nowhere to hide. He’s giving you his dialogue and performance. That was quite good to be able to do the entire thing one animator with one puppet. You develop the sense of him and his performance. He’s pretty honest and in your face. And also, during the course of his film time, he’s getting a little bit bruised and battered. His emotional line is quite heavy.

JM: And Taika Waititi — I don’t think I can picture anybody else voicing this character. He embodies Ralph so much.

AG: It was fabulous. We had some video footage of Taika chatting away and doing the dialogue with his toothpaste and teeth cleaning. So valuable to have that piece of reference to play with. He was amazing. I think he actually recorded that on the flight between Thor: Love and Thunder and something else he was doing. We managed to sneak him in with his crazy schedule. Taika did a spectacular job. All of the cast members did.

JM: When we last spoke about four and a half years ago, it was for Isle of Dogs. Since then, I believe you worked on The French Dispatch with Wes [Anderson] as well. Are you working on either Asteroid City or The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar?

AG: All of them. We finished on French Dispatch and then I was working for maybe two years on Asteroid City. We’ve done a few sequences and lots of different techniques. We just finished the stop-motion part a couple months ago. We’ve been working for this last year on Henry Sugar. We just finished the last shot before Christmas. We’ve had a lot of fun working with Wes this last year. He’s kept us very, very busy on lots of different things… a lot of very challenging things as well.

JM: That’s so great that Wes continues to embrace stop-motion.

AG: He’s been very good. He’s been championing a lot of the things. Super pleased to be challenged in a way to do something new and crazy and more unbelievable than ever before.

JM: Wow. I can’t wait to see those movies. Asteroid City seems to have the biggest cast of any movie in the history of motion pictures.

AG: That’s exactly right! (laughs) You’ve never seen anything like it. We were doing some shots out in Spain, on location… you were constantly amazed by the flow of people, very famous stars, who would come in and be involved every day. I can’t wait to see it. I’m sure it’s going to be the most spectacular, lovely-looking thing, with some brilliant performances and a great story.

JM: Nice. Andy, what would it mean to you for Save Ralph to be an Academy Award nominee after this massive and successful campaign?

AG: It would be a terrific honor to even get to the next stage. And for Ralph, his journey has been long but it’s not over yet. He’s about to crack changing the law in a couple of other countries. He’s managed to change the law in a few places already. It’s had a pronounced effect worldwide. I think he’s punched way above his weight, and we’re all very proud of him.