5 FUN Facts About Vanellope von Schweetz In Ralph Breaks The Internet + PRINTABLES And Coloring Pages

According to animation supervisor Dave Hardin, Sarah Silverman provided animators with lots of reference.

Sarah has a really distinct mouth shape that showcases her two front teeth. We tried to build that into the character so that she feels real, familiar—particularly because Vanellope has a heavy emotional load to carry in this film.

Sarah Silverman returns as the voice of Vanellope.

She craves excitement. The internet just blows her mind. She’s profoundly interested and excited, while Ralph is more reticent. She meets Shank, who’s the leader of a racing game called Slaughter Race. And Shank becomes a mentor to Vanellope — she takes her under her wing. But that may be threatening to Ralph.

I think kids and adults will be moved emotionally. It’s so existential. I love how it transcends age and has such depth.

According to animation supervisor Justin Sklar, bringing the RALPH character back to life wasn’t the slam dunk it would seem, as technology has changed since the first film was released.

We spent a fair amount of time figuring out how we were going to make Ralph feel like he did in the first movie, while taking advantage of all of the knowledge that we’ve gained. We ultimately rebuilt him. He has crow’s-feet now. His fists are different — more graphic. We pushed the angular design across the board — his shoulders and hips are more square-shaped.

Director of cinematography layout Nathan Detroit Warner says that the writers and animators did such a spectacular job making audiences emotionally connect with the characters, his team utilized live-action camera techniques to support and enhance their efforts.

I wanted to do our part by bringing people into a world that they recognized. I wanted people to feel like Ralph belongs in a live-action world. I wanted people to imagine this giant, 7-foot-tall person lives in the real world.

So we went to great lengths to make sure that our lens duplicated what happens in the real world. We did something called lens breathing, which is when you switch your focus between objects stacked in the frame and the lens physically adjusts a bit and gets wider or narrower. In live action, that little adjustment lets our eyes recognize something has changed, which is important because it’s often happening during an emotional beat.

Nathan Warner’s arsenal also expanded to include other live-action-inspired tools like lens flares and lens curvature, paying special attention to where the eyes go in any given sequence.

The world of the internet is bustling with activity, featuring two key categories of characters.

Net Users are the avatars that represent people from the real world as they explore the internet.

When a person moves their cursor around on a computer screen, they are moving their Net User avatar within the internet. Early tests revealed that some shots would feature more than 100,000 Net Users, who mill about the internet in search of the best deals and latest gossip. Mostly unaware of each other, they are ushered in and around the vast world via a complex transportation system. “Net Users are the flow of the world,” says crowds supervisor Moe El-Ali. “There would not be light in the internet without the Users.”

Netizens are the residents of the internet.

They are the employees of the various websites visited by the Net Users, helping them navigate their purchases and searches. Yesss and KnowsMore are Netizens. “Netizens have a full range of emotions,” says El-Ali. “They know what’s going on around them.”

One defining aspect of Vanellope that’s back in bigger and better ways is her glitch. According to head of effects animation Cesar Velazquez, there are two types of glitches in “Ralph Breaks the Internet.”

One is when she’s nervous and she glitches in place as a reflection of her emotional state. The other glitch is when she’s more in control and wants to teleport to a different place — she uses it while racing a lot. That emerged at the end of the first film, but it’s her primary glitch now.

Filmmakers called on Gal Gadot to give voice to Shank. Gal Gadot says:

Shank is amazing at driving cars and has this bad-girl vibe to her. But as the movie goes on you realize how fun, wise and warm she really is on the inside, which is what I like most about her.

According to director Phil Johnston, Gal Gadot adds extraordinary dimension to the character.

There’s so much texture to her voice and so much living in her voice. If Ralph is Vanellope’s big-brother figure, we wanted a big-sister figure. We wanted someone that Vanellope would look up to, and Gal is definitely someone kids — and a lot of adults I know — aspire to emulate. I can’t imagine anyone else embodying that part.

Dave Komorowski, head of characters, says Shank — in all her subtlety — is technically and visually decked out.

She has fully functioning clothing — a t-shirt, a hoodie that zips and a leather jacket on top of that. Plus, she has big hoop earrings. And we run wind through her hair the whole time she’s racing.

Kira Lehtomaki, co-head of animation, adds that Shank’s look was inspired by another character.

There’s such a cool dynamic with Shank. She was actually designed to mirror Vanellope — they both have hoodies, for example — yet Shank comes from an entirely different world. She’s very controlled. To be strong and intimidating, she doesn’t have to move fast or have extreme poses. In her stillness, she comes to life.

Hand-drawn animation supervisor Mark Henn agrees.

With Shank, less is best.

KnowsMore is a search engine Ralph and Vanellope turn to upon arriving in the internet. He is more than ready with answers when it comes to tracking down that elusive place called eBay where they hope to find the coveted Sugar Rush steering wheel. Literally a know-it-all, KnowsMore frequently gets ahead of himself, finishing people’s sentences in an attempt to guess what they’re going to say.

“He has a pretty aggressive auto-fill,” says co-screenwriter Pamela Ribon. “He just wants to be helpful and fast, but he can come off as nosy.”

According to art director-characters Ami Thompson, KnowsMore is straight out of academia. “We gave him big glasses and a mortarboard hat with a tassel,” she says. “He’s a little professor.”

Filmmakers decided to have KnowsMore’s eyes hand-drawn, calling on veteran animator Rachel Bibb to create a dynamic look for the character’s big eyes.

The talentd Alan Tudyk lends his voice to KnowsMore. “Alan has become somewhat of a go-to good- luck charm for Disney since the first ‘Wreck-It Ralph,’” says director Rich Moore. “He’s such a versatile actor. He’s like a chef — he throws a bunch of ingredients into a stew that brews in his head. The performances he gives are in the moment.”

Alan Tudyk channeled iconic personalities to find the voice of KnowsMore.

Rich [Moore] asked me to listen to interviews of the author Truman Capote and lean into his more snooty affectations. As I was working on it, I realized that Truman Capote and Droopy Dawg live in the same vocal neighborhood. KnowsMore now lives between the two of them. KnowsMore’s herky-jerky search spasm was my favorite part.