Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker introduced the adorable character named Babu Frik. Voiced by Shirley Henderson, the character is a tiny droidsmith that works among the Spice Runners of Kijimi. He can reprogram basically any droid and has captured the hearts of many fans. Though the role might have been a perfect choice for the creature, the early reiterations reveal that he could have been a medium.
In a recent interview with Collider, creature and makeup effects supervisor Neal Scanlan shared some details of how they brought Babu Frik to life. "The real idea from J.J. [Abrams] was that little Babu would be a character very much like he is in the film, but not necessarily doing the job that he's doing in the film," he said. "He was much more of a kind of a medium almost."
Scanlan says Rey was originally going to turn to Babu to get some information. He was almost going to be in an environment that's scaled to his size as well. "So when we started to design Babu—Ivan Manzella designed him, and he was costumed very differently than what you see in the final movie," he explained. "So as a character, he was there very, very early on in J.J.'s world, the role that he played changed several times."
While he was a character that was created early on, his size never changed as well as the "methodology" of how they were going to do Babu Frik. "It was really more about re-costuming him and looking at what his performance might be," Scanlan added. They initially wanted to do the character without any digital removal and use "certain ways" of puppeteering, but as the story progressed, they turned to CG.
Before the final form and age of what they went with in the final cut, Scanlan says Babu Frik had about five iterations but they were able to capture "what would be right for the moment."
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Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker is now available on Digital HD and hits 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, and DVD on March 31st.
Also Read: Star Wars: Emperor Palpatine was Almost a ‘Dismembered' Version in The Rise of Skywalker
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Episode IX