I seem to always miss the first drafts. I would love the link to the AVI of the first draft Yoda for my personal archive. I'm also still looking for the AVI of the first draft of the teaser trailer.

I just watched the final draft now. And again.

Wow. I love the Yoda puppet. Always have. I think with the subtle tweaks you've added here you're effectively bridging the gap between the puppet and the way-too-emotive CG Yoda. He looks more like he's forming the words now, and I get shivers now when he says "You will be. You will be." as I should have had every time.

I think my final test will be to show my wife to see if she even notices something amiss. She's a Star Wars fan (not sure where that puts us then; fanatics?), so she's seen the originals enough, but I would use her as the judge as how much is too much.

EDIT: Sent my wife the YouTube link at random. She wrote back:

"wow that looks great! it doesnt look tweaked at all, natural. nice!"

So there you go.

As for Yoda's wobbly ears, I also recall them specifically mentioning in the AoftC bonus features that they tried to replicate it in the CG model. So by that logic, its officially not a limitation of the puppet, but a character trait of Yoda.