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Q: What was your greatest difficulty when it came to animating Jar Jar Binks? Answered by: Lou Dellarosa

ILM Episode I Team: Character lead for Jar Jar Binks.

Among the many animation challenges with Jar Jar, there were a few that remained constant. Aesthetically, one of the challenges animators faced was keeping Jar Jar's neck in correct posture between his head and chest. In some scenes, while animating overlapping action with his head in relation to his chest, his neck sometimes had a tendency to become too far stretched in any one direction between key poses of the two body parts. This was a problem many Jar Jar animators had to be aware of and avoid, especially during scenes calling for Jar Jar to move about frantically. The abundant length of Jar Jar's ears posed another problem for animators and as well as modelers. More often than not, it only became apparent that his ears were intersecting his shoulders after running ear and cloth simulations. On those occasions, corrective shapes were modeled on his ears and vest to fix those areas where the problem occurred. Often times, corrective shapes were required on almost every frame of a shot. On a performance level, Jar Jar posed a common challenge shared by many of the Jar Jar animators. In contrast to his numerous Jerry Lewis type antics, there were many shots that, for the purposes of continuity, required Jar Jar to inconspicuously appear in a non scene-stealing moment while the live actors or other CG characters within the scene delivered their performances. Scenes like these always prove to be a challenge for animators who are accustomed to delivering broad, expressive performances for the characters they animate, particularly one as animated as Jar Jar. Many times the animators had to limit Jar Jar's animation to just a couple of eye blinks here and there, subtle weight shifts, and the smallest limb movements. In other words, just enough animation to keep Jar Jar "alive" without stealing the scene from the other performers.

