Everyone loves Baby Yoda (AKA The Child) from the Disney+ series The Mandalorian. However, that might not have been the case if Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni had used one of the other early concepts, as seen in the images above and below.
The early Baby Yoda concept art was revealed on the latest episode of Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, the Disney+ documentary series. Episode 5 of the series focuses on “practical effects,” the movie-making art of using real materials to create effects such as wind, rain, make-up, prosthetics, and, in this case, puppets.
A large portion of the show examines the creation and use of The Child puppet. Werner Herzog (The Client) was an advocate for the use of a physical puppet instead of a CG version. Filoni was considering filming two takes: one with the puppet and one without so they could add in a CG Child later. Herzog emphatically told the crew to commit to the magic of using a real puppet. The crew abandoned the idea of a CG Baby Yoda and fully committed to using the puppet.
PRACTICAL MAGIC
As revealed in the documentary, Lucasfilm selected the Baby Yoda concept art by Christian Alzmann as the best version. Then Legacy Effects was brought in to design the physical puppet, which cost around $5 million to make. Puppeteers from Legacy were interviewed and shown operating The Child puppet, which take several puppeteers to operate.
The episode also looks at miniature design and how that made a difference in filming The Mandalorian instead of using computer graphics. Even the miniature models that were not used in filming were utilized for determining correct lighting on CG elements.
If you aren’t watching Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian, you should. It’s like a masterclass in sci-fi filmmaking. It’s the deepest dive behind the scenes of any Star Wars production that I know of.
You can check out the other designs for The Child below.
Hey, did you get your Baby Yoda from Build-A-Bear? Let us know. Build-A-Bear just had a second offering of The Child, which again sold out quickly.
