MythBusters star Grant Imahara died from a brain aneurysm on Monday at the age of 49 with the passing of the popular engineer-turned-television-personality prompting an outpouring of tributes and remembrances of not just his MythBusters work, but other aspects of his career as well. That includes Imahara’s accurate, fully animatronic Baby Yoda. Video of the stunning creation, which Imahara originally shared on social media back in March, has gone viral again as people remember the popular and talented engineer.
Videos by ComicBook.com
On Tuesday, NowThis News shared video of Imahara’s Baby Yoda in a post that quickly racked up more than 289,000 views. The video shows some of the details of how the Imahara put the adorable creation together, along with help from prop maker Lauren Markland and movie costumer Lindsay Hamilton. It even shows some of the lifelike reactions the Baby Yoda has, especially when it comes to chicken nuggets. You can check it out below.
Former ‘Mythbusters’ star Grant Imahara has died at 49 of a brain aneurysm. The late electrical engineer and roboticist created this animatronic Baby Yoda back in March https://t.co/nQYht0WOUJ pic.twitter.com/vNcD1TDKuZ
— NowThis (@nowthisnews) July 14, 2020
“Baby Yoda is universally cute, hands down. In the few public outings, we’ve had, everyone melts. He’s a happiness maker,” Imahara told CNET about his creation based on the beloved Star Wars: The Mandalorian character. At the time, Imahara had plans to take the Baby Yoda to children’s hospitals to cheer up young patients.
Markland also took to Twitter Tuesday to pay tribute to Imahara, sharing a touching memory from her time working with him the creation of Baby Yoda, revealing that he told her he never doubted her ability to do the project.
Last day of work on Baby Yoda:
Me: “I was so afraid that I wouldn’t be able to do this, honestly.”
Him, with a smile: “Really? I never had any doubt.”
This is the kind of person he was. Pushed me to be better, kept striving to grow, did things to lighten the lives of others.
— ✨ Your Vaguely Nefarious Waifu ✨ (@SaltiestHime) July 14, 2020
Imahara was a long-time Hollywood visual effects profession and electrical engineer with an extensive career outside of his work on MythBusters and, later, Netflix’s White Rabbit Project. He also worked at THX and Industrial Light and Magic, two subsidiaries of Lucasfilm where he worked as an animatronics model maker and worked on all three Star Wars prequels in addition to The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Galaxy Quest, Van Helsing, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, and Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines.
The engineer-turned-television personality most recently consulted with Walt Disney Imagineering with a project that resulted in a robot that was able to perform acrobatic stunts. Authoring a paper called Stickman: Towards a Human Scale Acrobatic Robot, the prototype Imahara helped to create eventually evolved into a product called Stuntronics, something used in most Disney parks around the world.
What do you think about Imahara’s accurate, fully animatronic Baby Yoda? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
