Animating Yoda
Coleman says, "The biggest technical challenge for me was animating Yoda. That was due to Frank Oz having created that character in The Empire Strikes Back as a puppet that we all know and love. This time, Yoda, who is supposed to be 2'll" tall and 874 years old, is much more active and prominent. He actually runs and has a light saber battle. So he had to be a fully animated character in this film, not a puppet. That decision was made early on because George indicated Yoda was going to have to move quickly. In his earlier screen appearances, he moved slowly with a cane. I wanted to make sure this character was reminiscent of our recollections of what he was like in 1980 and 1983."

CG model supervisor Geoff Campbell (left) and animation director Rob Coleman discuss how to preserve the charm of the puppet Yoda from The Empire Strikes Back while animating him digitally for Episode II. Photo credit: David Owen.

"I studied Frank Oz's work from those classic movies with a great team of animators. Geoff Campbell, the modeling supervisor on this film, built a beautiful digital model of Yoda. We took a great deal of care to animate him carefully and lovingly so he remained true to his character. I spent a lot of my time supervising his performances in the movie because he's in a lot of it."

When the feature was being shot in Sydney, Australia, Lucas had Coleman present so he could be consulted about how the post-production images would work with what was being filmed. Lucas would ask him from time to time what Yoda's movements would be in a scene so he could direct his actors properly. Coleman says, "We had a lot of discussions about how slowly Yoda would be speaking. We didn't have the luxury of having Frank Oz there with us on the set when we were shooting the live-action. [Oz provided Yoda's voice in this and earlier films.] We had one of the actors perform his lines off-camera so we could get the right cadence in the scene. That worked out really well."

An all digital Yoda for the new century. © Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All rights reserved. Digital work by Industrial Light & Magic.

"We had a stand-in rubber Yoda puppet from a previous movie so we could see what the lighting was going to look like. We photographed that puppet sitting or standing in the scene with the lights on it so the technical directors and the compositors would have a really great reference frame when it came time to light the digital Yoda."

Animation Done On Macs
Despite the price differences between high-end Silicon Graphics workstations and Macintosh products, Coleman says, "When you are dealing with top level artists and technicians, they can pretty much create the same look and feel on any platform. Some platforms have better modeling packages, some have better renderers, and some have better atmosphere. We have a good library of in-house software that we have written and off-the-shelf software that we have bought, so that we can create the imagery that we need."

The flying R2-D2 was created using Macintosh computers. Even George Lucas thought it was a prop! © Lucasfilm Ltd. & TM. All rights reserved. Digital work by Industrial Light & Magic.

There is "a tiny, tiny amount" of Mac-based animation in the film. Its use was based on the availability of Billy Brooks, who animates on a Macintosh system. Coleman says, "The computer graphics department here is enormous. At any time we can be working on from 5 to 10 different films. Star Wars was always the biggest project, but it was never the only one. Some times we are fully booked. We do have some talented artists like Billy Brooks who worked on the R2-D2 shots using Macintosh. It looks the same."