#STAR WARS MANDALORIAN CONCEPT ART ANDROID#
#STAR WARS MANDALORIAN CONCEPT ART SERIES#

вЂњIt was just so realвЂќ is the prevailing sentiment.ДЄ testament to just how plausible the Baby Yoda puppet looked came from an unlikely source: Werner Herzog. The cast and crew held it as if it were a real child people talked to it as though it were alive. He describes the feeling of looking over at it on set and watching it turn its head to face you even if you know there are puppeteers doing it, there was a certain magic that gave Baby YodaвЂ™s every movement an eerily realistic life. вЂњItвЂ™s really disconcerting and effective when you see it,вЂќ director Taika Waititi says in the Disney Gallery episode. One of the puppeteers describes the process as вЂњlike a band jamming out.вЂќ ItвЂ™s an amazingly difficult effort of coordination and timing.

As the puppeteer controlling the eyes sees the puppeteer controlling the head start a pivot, he has to nimbly follow along, so that the movements look and feel smooth and organic. Each puppeteer has to anticipate the movements of the other and respond in time, as the filmmakers вЂњdirectвЂќ the puppet as one cohesive whole, almost as if it were an actor. Based on whatвЂ™s shown in the episode, Baby YodaвЂ™s hands, eyes, ears, and facial features are operated by a team of a half-dozen puppeteers working in tandem: One controls the movement of the ears by remote control, another guides the torso with more traditional rods, like a marionette. The team at Legacy spent the next three months building an extraordinarily sophisticated puppet, handcrafting every hair follicle and inch of its body and putting it together with meticulous care. вЂњThatвЂ™s when it really became the baby,вЂќ Favreau says. So they brought in Legacy Effects, an SFX studio known for their prosthetic and animatronic work, to pull it off. Once theyвЂ™d determined how Baby Yoda should look, they needed to bring it to life, and the initial attempts at building models lacked the cuteness that had made the concept shine. вЂњThe idea of the face not being that expressive, but everything being about the eyes looking at you and the ears moving, was something that I had wanted to try.вЂќ Favreau and Mandalorian executive producer Dave Filoni looked at hundreds of concept drawings - all either too cute or too ugly - until they settled on the right look. вЂњI had already been preoccupied with the look of big eyes and ears for motion,вЂќ Favreau says in the episode. In settling on how a member of YodaвЂ™s race would be realized for The Mandalorian, Favreau drew inspiration from Gnomes & Goblins, a short virtual-reality film he has been working on for the last four years. The look of Baby Yoda, obviously, was derived from Yoda himself, as he was conceived by George Lucas and Frank Oz in the original Star Wars trilogy.

#STAR WARS MANDALORIAN CONCEPT ART ANDROID#

Called вЂњPractical,вЂќ the episode delves into the complex practical VFX work that went into The Mandalorian, including comprehensive overviews of how they brought to life the android bounty hunter IG-11, the Ugnaught moisture farmer Kuiil and, of course, the endearing alien superstar himself, Baby Yoda - whom the showrunners, directors, producers, cast members, and everyone on the crew refers to as вЂњthe babyвЂќ or simply вЂњbaby.вЂќ In fact, one of the first Baby Yoda revelations is that the original script introduced him as вЂњa baby, the same race as Yoda.вЂќ

#STAR WARS MANDALORIAN CONCEPT ART SERIES#

This week, though, Disney+ released the fifth episode of Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, its eight-episode documentary series that offers a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the show. When I reached out to Disney in December hoping to learn more about the process and interview people from the special-effects team responsible for the creature, they effectively told me those details were under wraps my contacts in the SFX industry didnвЂ™t know anything either, including which effects studio actually did the work.

He was Baby Yoda.Д«ut until now, Disney has been diligently secretive about exactly what Baby Yoda was - whether he was some kind of puppet, a cleverly animated CGI creation, an animatronic doll, or some elaborate combination of the above. He drank space tea, rode in a space carriage, wore an oversize space jacket. But when Jon FavreauвЂ™s space-Western epic The Mandalorian launched last November as the marquee original series on Disney+, the showвЂ™s breakout character immediately captured the Zeitgeist.

No one could have predicted that one of the biggest landmark cultural events in recent memory would be a wide-eyed infant Muppet from the Star Wars universe.

Star wars mandalorian concept art