Star Wars: The Mandalorian VFX Reel Breaks Down Bringing IG-11 to Life

One graphics team’s Star Wars: The Mandalorian’s VFX reel breaks down how they brought IG-11 [...]

One graphics team's Star Wars: The Mandalorian's VFX reel breaks down how they brought IG-11 to life. Hybride Technologies are the unit responsible for the droid in action. They posted some of their reel as they have been nominated for an Emmy for their work on the Disney+ series. It should come as no surprise that the effects team scored a nomination or two. To show how much people enjoyed Taika Waititi's performance as IG-11, he was also nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Character Voice-Over Performance. But all that witty delivery wouldn't mean a ton without the fluid movements and slick blaster work from Hybride Technologies.

Waititi described everyone's new favorite droid, "IG-11 is very innocent and naive and direct and doesn't know about sarcasm and doesn't know how to lie. It's like a child with a gun."

THE MANDALORIAN SEASON 1 - HYBRIDE ANIMATION BREAKDOWN from Hybride Technologies on Vimeo.

Dave Filoni is the executive producer on The Mandalorian and he had to explain why he chose to use IG-11 instead of IG-88 from the original trilogy. He told IGN that it really came down to paving the way for new stories.

"For me, working on Star Wars so long, I tend to like to lean towards creation of new characters." Filoni began. "I love and respect the old characters and the classic characters - and sometimes I think maybe I'm a bit too reverent with things - but I like areas that are undefined now. Like my experience creating Ahsoka [Tano for Star Wars: The Clone Wars] in a space that was fairly well defined between two films, and yet we were able to land and add a valuable piece to that story in the prequels that didn't take away from any of Anakin or Obi-Wan's arc."

"So a droid like IG-88, if you know the Expanded Universe and the Star Wars history, there are a lot of stories around him or what might've happened to that particular droid." Filoni added. "So out of respect for people that have been with this franchise a long time, it's like, 'well if we do something with this space, would that be contradicting those stories?' So it's better just to say, 'Well, there's other droids,' it's not like it was a unique assassin droid. And then we have a little more free-range. I mean, people forget in Empire, you never even see him walk or take a step - the prop was actually bolted to the floor. So just giving him feet was something new and original. But yeah, I just gravitate to the open field that you get with new characters, and then when you do bring up something, if you choose to, like when we brought Obi-Wan finally into Star Wars Rebels, I think it becomes significant and special."

Who is your favorite droid? Let us know down in the comments!

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