Jeremy Bowker, sound designer who crafted effects and environments for Zootopia 2, and David Fluhr, supervising re-recording mixer who led the final mixes and international workflows, discuss balancing comedy, horror, and action in an animated soundscape. They talk mixing big music with effects, designing impossible car sounds, planning Atmos and stems, and prepping international and dialogue mixes.
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Genre Shifts Drive Sound Choices
Animation shifts between realistic and exaggerated worlds to serve emotion and comedy.
Jeremy Bowker says that genre shifts let the team flex different sonic styles while keeping story cohesion.
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Mix In Logical Passes
Start mixes by locking dialogue, then do a music pass, then an effects pass to carve space.
David Fluhr recommends iterative nip-and-tuck with directors to preserve clarity and fun.
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Carve Frequency Space For Music
Restrict effects to specific spectral ranges to avoid masking the score.
Jeremy Bowker suggests using lows/mids for water effects so the flute and high-end music remain clear.
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Zootopia 2 had the second biggest box office in 2025. People all over the world flocked to see it and that is not lost on the sound team behind it. In this episode Jeremy Bowker (sound designer & supervising sound editor) and David Fluhr (supervising re-recording mixer) discuss how they tackle a film with this much anticipation behind it, mixing dialog for animation, designing sounds to work with the massive score, their approach to international versions and lots more. ______SPONSORS: If you work in sound design, post, or game audio, you already know how much time the right library can save you. For the month of February, get 50% off any Sound Ideas Membership Tier, no matter which level of access you need. That’s half off the entire professionally recorded sound effects catalog, from cinematic and broadcast to hard-to-find specialty sounds. Just head to http://sound-ideas.com/ and use the promo code TONEBENDERS50 at checkout. ______
If you are interested in field recording, you should know about the O-Mini P48 and the brand new O-Mini PIP miniature omni-directional electret microphones. Each one is hand made by Chris Trevino, a practicing field recordist, and a really engaged member of the sound community. He puts a lot of work into making and testing each mic to ensure they live up to his high standards. They are ultra-sonic capable, which makes manipulating your recordings with them a lot of fun. They are also extremely affordable. At $150us for the P48 & $130 for the PIP, they offer a lot of value for a stereo matched pair. Find out more at https://www.chrisatrevino.com/store _______ Come celebrate the best sounding films, series and games from the last year at the MPSE Golden Reel Awards on Sunday March 8th starting at 3pm. For full details and to find out how to purchase tickets head to https://mpse.org/event-6300024
Episode Notes: https://tonebenderspodcast.com/350-zootopia-2/
Podcast Homepage: https://tonebenderspodcast.com
This episode is hosted by Timothy Muirhead
Tonebenders Podcast