Most people call it the chess game on board the Millennium Falcon. When Phil Tippett and Jon Berg first animated these critters back in 1976, it was never called the chess board. Luckily the Lucas archives and avid collectors still had the original puppets from that time. Molds were made and new puppets where fabricated for them to live again in, The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Those were the films I helped to animate the new critters in.
The Dejarik Game
That is the name that was given in the Star Wars Lexicon. Phil Tippett and Jon Berg just animated puppets battling each other on a table-top. One creature walked forward and bashed the other creature. It was the press and the fans that called it the Chess Game.
Here is a clip from Star Wars The Force Awakens. I animated the critters on the chess board along with fellow master animator Tom Gibbons.
Here is the final Stop Motion Animation from the film, The Force Awakens.
TOM GIBBONS master animator moved the puppets as well.
TOM and I have been animating together since the first film we worked on..(James and the Giant Peach)
Here is a short little time-lapse of me balancing the puppets. I’m tightening and loosening the joints of the armature to give me the perfect tension to animate with.
Young master Arne Hain also joined the animation table. Arne never imagined he would be working on a Star Wars film when he first landed in the States. He originally flew over from Germany to help animate on MadGod.
Although I got to work with the largest puppet, my sausage fingers still had trouble getting in there.
The Gang.
The Puppets laugh at their manipulators.
Here is a little behind the scenes movie of some puppet surgery. During the Animation of the puppets, one of the arms needed a repair. We had to stop and dig into the puppets arm to get to the armature to loosen a joint that was making animation difficult. Once the arm was glued back into place we had to wait 20 minutes for the silicon to dry then we were back to animating.
Super 8 Movies
KMART
I was 12 years old when I first started to play around with animation. I would study super 8 films that I bought at my local shop. The store was called Kmart and every Friday I would ride my bike there to see if any new Super 8 movies had arrived.
WORK SHOES. My StopMO shoes while animating the chess scene. Converse are not the best shoes to wear when standing in one place for hours. For some reason I enjoy the foot aches at the end of the day. They remind me that I did do a hard days work, when I just thought I was playing.
I have always been a Fanboy of the original Star Wars 1977. The dream to someday work on a Star Wars film was never as great once I saw Empire Strikes Back. When the stop motion sequences would play, I wished I could have been a part of their making. I was way too young and by the time I finally started animating as a profession, The Star Wars films were a thing of the past. Then Variety magazine put out a small teaser article that mentioned George Lucas was working on the continuation of the Star Wars saga. The timing was perfect and when I wrapped up on the movie James and the Giant Peach, I was hired on at Industrial Light and Magic. A place I had always wanted to work. I was on the newest Star Wars feature, The Phantom Menace and I was living a dream I never thought would be possible. I was animating and going to dallies to watch the rushes and George Lucas was right in the theater with the crew. Then the movie was released in 1999 and it wasn’t a party like Prince was always singing about. The movie was a flat out disappointment and it sucked as hard as I ever saw a movie suck. I was being blamed for destroying everyone’s childhood memories of a galaxy far far away. The crew leaving the theater that day were dazed and wondered into the street. Groups formed trying to comfort one another by saying, “It was great,? Right?”
Star Wars the Phantom Menace broke me and the only way out was to never go back to ILM. I just decided that I was done working there.
The following week I stayed in bed and a revelation formed in my head. I was through with the film industry. I would never animate again. I would live in San Francisco and hopefully get a job at Vesuvio’s pub washing pint glasses in a back room. So, I quit ILM. I spent that morning waiting for the phone ring. Waiting for ILM to call, to have someone one on the other end say, “Are you alright?” ”Are you coming into work today?”. I practiced what I was going to say and it all sounded very unprofessional and closer to what someone might say when they are having a mental breakdown. I was having a mental breakdown. It’s been 22 years and I can finally bring myself to lay this out.
I just never went back into work. I told the person on the other end of the phone that I would not be coming into work that day or any other day. The HR department at Industrial Light and Magic said that it would look very bad on my record to just leave without an exit interview. It looked bad to flat out quit without warning or telling the supervisors. I said that I understood that and whatever the HR department wanted to put in my workers file was fine with me. They said I would have trouble securing another animation gig especially in San Francisco. You shouldn’t just walk out on ILM. It will look very bad. The VFX industry is a small community in San Francisco and word would get around. Again I said I understood. I thanked them and hung up.
That weekend I drove out past Golden Gate Park to Ocean Beach and made a bon fire. A few friends showed up and, once the sun had begun to set, an inflatable blow-up doll of Jar Jar Binks was tossed onto the fire. The joy that flaming symbol of failure gave me was one of freedom and panic for my next job. But, standing in the ocean breeze, I knew everything would work out. Then the smell of the burning plastic polluted the air. It was horrendous and I’m sure quite harmful but not as horrendous as the foul stench that The Phantom Menace had already released unto the world.
Never work in this town again. So cliché.
Phil Tippett hired me and I think part of the reason he hired me was because he liked that story so much. That was in 1999 and since that time I have been back to work for ILM on a few more projects. In 2010 I joined the animators on the film Rango. In 2018 I returned again to ILM, this time in London to work on Jurassic World the Fallen Kingdom. However, it was at Tippett Studio where some major healing took place by animating stop-motion for The Force Awakens and The Rise of Skywalker.
No harm was done from that impulsive decision to quit my job after the premier of Star Wars The Phantom Menace. It just changed the direction and created new opportunities which eventually brought a chance meeting with my future wife working on a new animated show for kids.
The animated show was called: The Phantom Investigators.
I have once again become a huge fanboy of the direction Star Wars is heading. The Mandalorian changes everything. That show pulled the hurt 14 year old boy out of his room and made him look again into that once burnt out galaxy. The look and feel of the original Star Wars was back. Yes, STAR WARS. No Episodes. When I first saw Star Wars, the movie was called STAR WARS. That is what the Mandalorian has brought back with a huge bounty.
RANCOR attack in Phil’s Garage.