How Jabba the Hutt Came to Life in ‘Star Wars’

Video editor 70sSciFiBoy (previously) shared archival Star Wars footage showing how Jabba the Hutt came to life. Jabba was first played by an actor who acted out the lines and a stop-motion image was superimposed over him during the editing process of A New Hope. By the time The Return of the Jedi came about, the creative team used designer Ralph McQuarrie‘s conceptual model of Jabba to create a full-sized puppet that was operated by several men.

This is an insight into how a skilled creative team developed Ralph McQuarrie’s concept art and brought the full-sized Jabba puppet to life by way of a handful of dedicated operators and puppeteers.

Here’s the full original clip narrated by Mark Hamill.