Also， there were only a couple of scenes with the minions. When we saw the first animation test， I remember saying， “Oh man， these guys are awesome. They’re very expressive and funny. We’ve got to find more places for them in the movie.” Around then， Steve Carell （who plays Gru） came up with the idea of naming all of them.
TFK：我們現在認識的小黃人是怎樣來的呢？
科芬：一開始，小黃人被設計成那種身形龐大的肌肉型暴徒。我們不能那樣做，因為太醜了。於是我們選擇了穿工裝褲的小人，和人一樣，但體形非常小。而後，我們產生了“也許它們是地下生物”的想法，護目鏡就是從這裏來的，但我們保留了工裝褲，然後它們就變成類似青蛙的角色。我們發現那些小家夥還是挺醜的，於是設計師就想出了藥丸的基本造型。
另外，原本小黃人隻有幾個鏡頭。當我們第一次看到動畫片的試片後，我記得我說：“噢夥計，這些家夥棒極了。它們相當有表現力，很搞笑，我們要在電影裏多給它們一些鏡頭。”沒過多久，史蒂夫·卡瑞爾（格魯的配音）就想到要給所有小黃人取名字。
TFK： What’s it like now that they’ve become so popular？
Coffin： It is heartwarming[暖人心房的] to see how loved these guys are， but it’s also scary to see them as much as we do. They’re everywhere： on bags， phone cases， schoolbooks…It’s almost overwhelming[強悍而令人難以應對的].
TFK： What language do the minions speak exactly？ Is it just gibberish[胡言亂語]？
Coffin： It’s a mix of Spanish， French， English， Russian， Korean， Japanese， Chinese， Indonesian…The idea was to make these characters as international as possible. The main concept of the minion movie is to show that they served all of the evil masters around the world throughout time， so it would make sense that they have this mishmash[混雜物] of different languages embedded[使嵌入] in their own language.
TFK： Do people often ask you to do the minions’voice？
Coffin： I can’t really do it offhand[即時地]. Weirdly[古怪地] enough， I do write out the words that I’m going to say because when you speak this kind of foreign nonsensical[無意義的] language， you have to repeat it over and over so that it feels natural， like a real language. I write it down and basically record myself over and over until the moment that it feels natural， which isn’t the easiest thing to do with words that don’t mean anything.