The creators of The Mandalorian have shared the design process for ‘Baby Yoda’ and let me tell you, he was not always as cute as he ended up on screen.
In case you missed it, the Star Wars Celebration is currently underway at the Anaheim Convention Center in California, and last night featured a panel titled Doug Chiang: Designing The Mandalorian.
As the name suggests, the panel took a dive into the design behind the popular Disney+ series, including giving fans a look at the process of taking Grogu - better known as ‘Baby Yoda’ - from paper to the screen.
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Chiang said creating the character’s design was ‘the trickiest’ of the series as they wanted to tread the ‘very fine line of not going too cute’ but also hitting on a creation that fans would love.
Well, mission accomplished I reckon.
The panel shared various stages of the design for Grogu, including one with pretty bizarre-looking human-type eyes.
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Chiang explained: "Finally we came back to something that was more Yoda-like, this seemed to be the direction that worked the best.
"We were all circling something, we knew we were in the zone, but none of these were hitting the perfect note for Jon [Favreau].
"Jon kept describing him as 'ugly-cute,' something that's not designed to be cute.
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“It turned out that the eyes were the key, Jon wanted them to be dog-like with giant, dark pupils; and not human like, when they're human eyes, when you can see the whites and the colour of his eyes, it gets very strange very fast.
“And this is really curious because Yoda has human eyes, and it looks great for him, but oddly when we gave Grogu human eyes he just looked creepy and psychotic."
See for yourself:
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Chiang went on: "Like a puppy dog, there's just enough white in his eyes visible to make him look adorable.
"Seeing that tiny bit of white gave his eyes a very charming, sympathetic look.
"Then dressing him in this oversized sack completely captured that ugly-cute factor."
And, of course, the final design was spot-on - remember when the show first launched and it seemed as though the entire world went into a frenzy over the cute character?
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It wasn’t long before toymakers got in on the action with both Hasbro and Lego offering fans the chance to buy their very own Grogu, which flew off the shelves.
Topics: TV and Film, The Mandalorian, Star Wars, Disney
Claire Reid