Originally posted by: Gaffer Tape Don't forget the animators. Have you ever listened to the commentary track for Attack of the Clones? Every time Yoda would appear on screen, the animators would fall over from patting themselves on the back so much. "Did you see how awesome Yoda's eye looked when he blinked right there?" or "The level of detail on Yoda's chin is just so amazing!" It got really old really fast.
Originally posted by: Yoda Is Your Father Hey, Lucasfilm animators (3D modellers to be precise), are you reading this? OK, Cool, listen up - Yeah, well done, the level of detail on the CG Yoda is pretty amazing. But guess what? HE DOESN'T FUCKING LOOK LIKE YODA!! So I guess you failed.
I can’t remember if it’s on one of the documentaries included with AOTC or perhaps TPM, but supposedly the animators had to convince George to do a CG Yoda. I think it was the TPM disk; they told George they could do a CG Yoda and he had them do a mock-up of it for the end of TPM, which he said was great. Based on the strength of that rendering George decided that Yoda could be CG for the rest of the PT.
I could probably believe that it was the animators’ idea if hadn’t seen George push for CG in everything else. I know it’s been said he tried to convince the effects people that worked on Gangs of New York to try and do the five corners in CG. I also heard that George tried to convince Jackson to go all CG with King Kong even after some miniatures had been completed. Then there’s the fact that it’s difficult to find a PT shot with no CG. All of that combines to make me wonder if George really needed any convincing to do a CG Yoda.
One of the reasons George said he was happy with the CG Yoda was because it allowed the “Sonic the Hedgehog” Yoda Lightsaber action at the end of AOTC and ROTS. It makes me wonder if there was no CG Yoda would we have also been spared the crazy Yoda duels. I sure wish I could’ve erased a few hard drives about 10 minutes before George “screened” the CG Yoda for the first time. Perhaps I could’ve had a real Yoda, a dignified Yoda (read non-dueling) and by extension a more dignified (again non-dueling) Palps.
