In speaking with The Hollywood Reporter, director/writer Jon Favreau expanded on the technology he and his production team used in designing the look and feel of The Mandalorian Disney+ series. Favreau also touched on the subject of creating the puppet for “The Child” (Baby Yoda) and how the team took care to make the on-screen distinction between the physical puppet and the CG version of “The Child” almost unrecognizable.
He’s mostly a puppet. When it’s CG, we try to make him obey the same physical laws that he would if he were a puppet. I think a lot of times CG makes itself too obvious where you don’t create parameters creatively that allow the character to keep the same identity and charm. … We’ll learn more about him over the course of the season. I think what’s great about what George created is that Yoda proper, the character that we grew up watching, was always shrouded in mystery, and that was what made him so archetypal and so mythic. We know who he is based on his behavior and what he stands for, but we don’t know a lot of details about where he comes from or his species. I think that’s why people are so curious about this little one of the same species.
He states that Disney was in agreement about holding back the initial release of any merchandise pertaining to Baby Yoda in order to allow the excitement of seeing the character in The Mandalorian for the first time really sink in with fans.
Favreau went on to say how both he and Dave Filoni are both looking towards the future in terms of what new Star Wars projects could come down the road, especially when talking about the extremely fertile timeline between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.
We want to make sure that we have a road map, because we’re also a puzzle piece that fits into a larger Star Wars universe that has a lot of other movies and a lot of other projects, and we want to make sure we’re consistent with them. We have a good 25-year patch of road [in the Star Wars canon] that nobody is exploring right now, and it’s the most interesting time for me as a storyteller to explore — the time after the fall of the empire and before the resurgence of the darker forces.
