Via Ign.com:

Recently, I got a chance to speak with Neal Scanlan, who was the creature shop head of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (and now Rogue One and Episode VIII).

During our chat, we covered a wide range of topics, including the creation of Supreme Leader Snoke as well as adding more Legacy characters to future movies.

Below, Scanlan talks about Maz Kanata’s puppet origin, the castle patrons, and The Force Awakens’ most challenging creature to make…

IGN Movies: Maz Kanata’s castle was obviously a major creature set piece. When you first read that scene, did it seem daunting to you, or was it more like, “Okay, now we really have a chance to stretch our legs and play”?

Neal Scanlan: Exactly the latter. I mean, any challenge like that is fun. Of course, it’s daunting. It’s daunting from the practical perspective, but we all worked on a limited timeframe and with budget restraints. There are all of those things that come into it. But I think the idea of being able to say, ‘Here is a forum which allows us to use as many different techniques as we want, from hand puppets to people in costumes to people in prosthetics to rod puppets — I mean, it was just a play field for me and my team. We really did enjoy Maz’s world and creating it.

IGN: I read in the Art of The Force Awakens book that Maz was originally going to be a puppet. What were some of those designs like before you decided to go full mo-cap?

Scanlan: They were very similar. Maz was a long design process, and I think that it was the first character we started on, way before we started on any others, because it was so important to J.J. But I think the reason we decided to go to CG was that — and it may not be completely evident from the film — but Maz’s development within J.J.’s mind and in the script, her role sort of grew. Certainly emotionally, it grew, and we felt there was a point where, in order for her to fully succeed and to liberate her from any constraints, to go to a CG version would mean that indeed. It also allowed us to continue to think and talk about Maz, even after we shot the scenes that Maz was in.

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