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The Jim Henson Legacy - Terms of Use
While Jim Henson and his company were not officially involved in the Star Wars films, the Yoda puppet was built with the help of veteran Henson designers, such as Wendy Froud, who later became the center of Jim Henson’s Creature Shop.
The Yoda puppet was originally designed and built by Stuart Freeborn for LucasFilm and Industrial Light & Magic. Frank Oz explained the character’s creation in further detail to IGN:
“…Jim came to me and said Gary Kurtz, who was co-producer of The Empire Strikes Back, had a character and I think they asked Jim first – but with running a company and everything he couldn’t do it, so he recommended me…. From then on, I was the one who kind of put all the elements of Yoda together, and although Jim didn’t make Yoda, George [Lucas] and he had an understanding that they would exchange technology information. George would give to Jim and Jim would give some of his people to George to help. Wendy Froud helped out a little bit with the character and two other people from Jim’s company worked the cables for me.”
