Jamie Benning recently completed this fantastic short documentary on the process of bringing Jabba the Hutt to life:

After interviewing puppeteer Toby Philpott at great length over Skype I decided to go a step further and create a mini documentary about his work on Jabba the Hutt for Return of the Jedi. This led me down many paths. Here is the result.


I think it's interesting that George Lucas wasn't completely satisfied with the result and talked about even then wanting to make Jabba a CG creation. It's probably a good thing the technology wasn't there as I think today the creature holds up in its own way better than a computer creation would have. That's a testament to the talent of the puppeteers inside the suit, people like Toby Philpott. 

If you fee like wasting the rest of your day on Star Wars, Jamie has a bunch more Star Wars docs for you, from A New Hope to Return of the Jedi. If you do like these videos, you can support Jamie over on Patreon here.

We've also got a special one for Jedi about location effects:

Check out more of Jamie's videos over on his page here.

Support Jamie Benning on Patreon

Source: Jamie Benning