Interview with Terryl Whitlatch
We spoke with Episode I concept artist and Jar Jar Binks designer Terryl Whitlatch for Heyblabber podcast. Below is the transcript of that interview.
Michael: So, I'm speaking today with Terryl Whitlatch, an illustrator, artist, creature designer, who has been working on films and books for the past several decades and has worked on a number of Star Wars projects and in particular designed many of the creatures in The Phantom Menace, including a lot of work on the focus of Heyblabber podcast, Jar Jar Binks. Welcome Terryl, thanks for speaking with me today!
Terryl Whitlatch: My pleasure, thank you for having me.
Michael: So, we're gonna get to Jar Jar, but I wanted to start with a little bit of background. How did you get interested in drawing and illustration and of course animals in the first place?
Terryl Whitlatch: Well, I think it started super, super, super early. My father was interesting; he was like a Renaissance man. He was a naval officer, he was a lieutenant commander on aircraft carrier, and at the same time he had been through medical school, he loved science and biology, he was very curious about everything. He'd seen the world, you know, being in the Navy. So, his interest in science was almost, you know, I guess by osmosis. And then my mother was -well still is - an artist, and then my grandfather, he had a horse ranch.
Michael: Oh wow.
Terryl Whitlatch: And so, I had kind of like this triple animal, nature, art stuff all around me and I was just very curious about the natural world and animals from a very, very early age. The first mammal I ever touched actually was a horse. I was, you know, I can remember my first pet that I ever had as a little tiny child was a goldfish, whom I loved very, very much, and I still remember that goldfish to this very day. She lived in a little, he or she, lived in a little castle and a little goldfish ball. I mourned when that little fish finally went to the far better country. And that was… I still remember that. But my dad was, whenever he was free, and he also taught high school biology, I'm not sure how he packed all these things in with all those other things he was doing and he was also working on his doctorate in science education. I don't know how he did it, but even though he was very busy, he always seemed very present somehow. But he would take my sister and I and my mom, of course, to the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, because he was stationed at Alameda, the naval base there, and to the Oakland Zoo and to the San Francisco Zoo, we were there a lot, a lot. I was just captivated by whatever I saw. And then going up to my grandfather's ranch was, like, just wonderful. I knew very early on, I was so fascinated with animals that the way to understand them, I wanted to be able to draw them so I could understand them. That was very early on when I was 3, 4 or 5. I knew I wanted to do something with the sciences. I wanted to be able to draw animals and prehistoric animals for nature magazines and for museums and all of that. And then I was fortunate enough when I was in high school, the senior scientific illustrator from UC Berkeley, I guess was friends with my biology teacher. He came and gave a lecture to our class and talked about scientific illustration. I said, “Oh my gosh, science and art in one wonderful package. That's what I want to do!" And so, I went on to major in vertebrate zoology with the intent of doing just that, scientific illustration. But while I still had a little bit of college money, college was not anywhere as expensive as it is now, I decided to take a little break from my zoo major to just take some, kind of, pad my skill level, like going to some local arts, arts schools in the San Francisco Bay Area. I went to two classes at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, and then also across the bay at the Academy of Art University. It was the Academy of Art College back then because it wasn't even accredited at that point in time. But anyway, all my zoo credits, they transferred over so it was like I was automatically like in the senior class, I kept taking the senior courses over and over again. And then to get my MFA, hey, you know, why not? Because I was intending on going back to complete my zoo major because I only had, like, a semester left to go for that, but why not, you know, get the BFA, (Bachelors of Fine Art) along the way? And so, the requirement for that was to participate in the senior show, senior spring show, the Academy of Art had every year. So, I did and my illustrations, I didn't have any space monsters or dragons or anything that was fantastic. It was all scientific illustration, real animals. I think the closest I would have come to a so-called science fiction animal was I had a group of hadrosaurs, duck-billed dinosaurs, walking across a plane, one of my illustrations. Anyway, so the next morning I got a call from Lucasfilm, and they hired me.
Michael: Oh, wow.
Terryl Whitlatch: Because I had something they could use; I had the knowledge of animal anatomy. When you understand anatomy, you can animate something, you can build something and that is what happened. They started me out working for LucasArts and then eventually I was hired by Industrial Light & Magic to work on Jumanji, that was my first feature film. And so, if you see those zebras, those are mine, my zebras.
Michael: Awesome.
Terryl Whitlatch: And I had a lot to do with the evil monkeys and most of the other animals in that film, except for the lion. And then the rest, anytime there was anything that had any kind of an animal or an imaginary animal, they tended to hand that work to me, whether it was a feature or a commercial even. And then when George decided to do the prequels, you know, everybody who wanted to work on that feature submitted our portfolio, just like everybody else had to, but I ended up being the principal creature designer for that film.
Michael: Oh wow. So, there's a number of things I want to get to there. But it sounds like it was, you know, you didn't necessarily have any intention of working in film or the entertainment industry. So, it's kind of just a fluke that someone saw your work, your portfolio, that one day. And if not, it could be a totally different story.
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah!
Michael: Wow. That's amazing; the paths that you take just based on, you know, who knows what.
Terryl Whitlatch: It is interesting, isn't it?
Michael: Yeah. Okay. So, Jumanji was your first film, and you also did work for LucasArts. Did you say the LucasArts came first?
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, The Dig. It was a Steven Spielberg project called The Dig, and my assignment was to populate this planet with hexapods, basically six-legged animals that can fill all different kinds of biological, zoological, environmental niches. So, that was great. I mean, there were so many possibilities there. And I also had to do some animation walk cycles, movement cycles, things like that, which was, which was a lot of fun too.
Michael: So, I remember The Dig, I remember when it came out. I think the computer I had at that time was not good enough to play it. So, I never got to play it, but it looked really interesting. I was going to ask, I thought that was a Steven Spielberg game. So, like, how involved was he with that? Did you ever get to meet him or…?
Terryl Whitlatch: I never have actually gotten to meet him. I mean, a lot of times we as designers can work on, you know, high-profile films, but not necessarily ever being able to really meet the director. Often the in-between would be the senior art director who then meets with the director. Sometimes you do meet the director, but most often that's not the case, except in the case for me and my colleagues for the Star Wars movies. Then we worked directly with George Lucas.
Michael: Yeah, I know Steven Spielberg, particularly around that time, it seemed like he had his hands in a number of things. Like, he had the Tiny Toons and the Animaniacs. And I always wonder, you know, how, how involved was he in those things? But yeah, that's interesting.
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, I love the Animaniacs to this day, I think Slinky Squirrel is my favorite character.
Michael: Okay, so we talked about Jumanji, we talked about The Dig. What else did you work on?
Terryl Whitlatch: I worked on a number of other, you know, Men in Black, I worked Dragonheart, Indian in the Cupboard, Curious George… They kind of start to become a blur after a while. Lots of commercials.
Michael: Yeah. So, wait. What's Curious George? What was there like a live-action one?
Terryl Whitlatch: Originally, it started out to be a live-action, well, CG, 3D. However, if you recall the illustrations in the Curious George books, they're very, very free and loose, traditional media, and it didn't translate well into 3D. It translated much better 2D so it ended up being a 2D film, very charming, very, very fun. And it's fun to design for 2D, it really is. You can definitely make a visible impact because 2D animation is a series of illustrations, you know, in sequence, so it is very fun to work to design for 2D. I like both. There's a certain charm.
Michael: So, you said that your work with ILM and LucasArts, I guess that did kind of lead to your work on The Phantom Menace, you submitted a portfolio. I know you did some work on the special editions as well. Was that after The Phantom Menace or was that, like, around the same time? I was trying to figure out the time frame.
Terryl Whitlatch: At the same time!
Michael: Oh wow.
Terryl Whitlatch: We worked on the special editions at the same time we were working on Phantom Menace. So, it was really fun and crazy and huge. And yeah, so we were constantly switching gears for at least the first year between the special editions and The Phantom Menace. But that worked out really well because it gave George extra time to work on the script for The Phantom Menace, and we had plenty to do, more than plenty to do.
Michael: So, like, what creatures or characters did you work on in the special editions? Was it like some of the stuff on Mos Eisley and Jabba's Palace, like that kind of stuff?
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, Jabba's Palace. Definitely, I worked on the dancing girls. In fact, Iain McCaig and I, we did a lot of work on designing dancing girls. They came to be known in the department as Jabba Cuties. [both chuckle] It was really, really, really fun.
Michael: Okay. They're the ones that Boba Fett kind of interacts with, I think.
Terryl Whitlatch: I guess so, yeah. If there's a new dancing girl there, Iain and I worked on some of those. And then creatures in the Cantina scene, I worked on, I invented a number of those. One of them replaced the Wolfman mask character. His name is Ketwol, he kind of was like a sort of like an elephant.
Michael: Okay. Yeah, yeah. That one definitely stood out to me when I first saw that because I was like, “Oh, that's new. That's brand new."
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah. So, that was a lot of fun. I also storyboarded the new scenes in special editions. I draw Ewoks really, really well because I storyboarded lots of Ewoks.
Michael: Oh, awesome. I love Ewoks. They are very cute. I want to talk about The Phantom Menace a little bit more. What did your role there consist of? How long were you there working on it? How often would you meet with George? That kind of stuff.
Terryl Whitlatch: Well, I was there at the get-go with Doug Chiang and I. Doug was my art director, and then we added, he added artists bit by bit. And I think that we really didn't have any more than seven people in the art department so we were a very small crew, and while there was sometimes some overlap, we pretty much had designated roles, and so it was a really efficiently run ship. So, I was there for the entire visual development into the production phase, and just as they were starting to ramp up for Episode II, which I worked a little bit on that, I was also moving out of the state at that time. So, that was, gosh, that was a couple of years. It's unheard of to work on a movie for two to three years, but this was very special. I mean, very unusual. George was footing the bill for everything, and so he was the king of the movie. He set the deadlines and the parameters, and that was really, very special, very, very special. So, we had the luxury of really being able to ideate, make things that had never really been done before. As long as they kind of look like they sort of belonged to the Star Wars universe, anything went and that is so, so rare in the entertainment industry. I mean, it is really, really rare. I mean, I think an exception may have been Avatar, where you have some beautiful, original designs that look like something that's really new and fresh, but that's really rare.
Michael: When you started working on The Phantom Menace, it seems like the scripts weren't finished yet. Is that true? Like, how much guidance were you given? Did any of what the art department was working on influence the script? Or ultimately, you know… Did George add stuff to the script based on what you were doing?
Terryl Whitlatch: I would say yes, yes, and yes. [chuckles] It kind of evolved organically. George had the broad strokes, the story arc, but didn't necessarily have all the details in. But there was enough of a framework where we could confidently dive in and design the environment, buildings, vehicles, and the aesthetics for, for example, Naboo. We didn't have to worry too much about, say, Tatooine, because that had already been established, but Naboo, we knew it was going to be a very beautiful, lush planet, a lot of Art Nouveau-inspired, curvilinear, voluptuous lines. Hired Iain McCaig, who's such a virtuoso of an artist, to really design the costuming, and I would say that Iain's art did have an influence, actually, in the casting of the principal human characters, because he would kind of insert, “Well, what would you think about this actor, actress?" and then draw them wearing this gorgeous costume.
Michael: Oh really?
Terryl Whitlatch: Oh, yeah! And that was really cool. I would say one thing that was fun about working with George Lucas is that he was really open to ideas, really super open to ideas. He treated us all very kindly, and it was really a pleasure to work with him.
Michael: I was looking through one of The Art of Episode I books, and I noticed there's at least some sketches where it's obviously an actor, Liam Neeson comes to mind, and I was wondering if that came after he was cast, or if that was actually, like, possibly… Now, what you said, is it possible?
Terryl Whitlatch: I think that was before.
Michael: Oh wow. That's crazy. I was just like, that must have been, you know, they knew that he was cast.
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, it was pretty cool to kind of see this happening at such a ground level and seeing Doug Chiang's beautiful vehicular designs. They were so sleek and just so lovely, which was even, you could see his background in automotive design coming through. And that, yeah, and he was able to design really humorous robot characters as well. I mean, you had these lovely vehicles on one part of it, and then you had these pretty funny robots for comic relief on the other side of it. I mean, we had a really versatile crew, I will say.
Michael: And Doug, he's still involved, right? Like, didn't he do a lot of work on the sequels?
Terryl Whitlatch: Yes. Yes.
Michael: Okay, and I think even maybe, like, some of the live-action shows, too, like The Mandalorian?
Terryl Whitlatch: Yes.
Michael: Okay, that's a long time. So, let's get to Jar Jar. Could you talk about how you went about designing Jar Jar? Did other concepts exist from other artists before you started designing him? Or was it something you were all kind of working on at the same time?
Terryl Whitlatch: I would say that George had a general idea of what the character was going to be like, in that he was going to be amphibious, he was not going to be a person in a suit. He was going to be one of the first fully realized digital characters that had to support the movie in many, many scenes. That was a first in the history of filmmaking. He was to be, you know, kind of tall and gangly and clumsy. He was to be intentionally annoying, he was meant to be annoying; he had a good heart, but, you know, it's like a person that tries too hard and ends up being annoying. So, Doug and I kind of started just messing around and playing with certain things. And then Doug kind of went towards like, “Oh, how about like, kind of a…" he did one little painting, kind of like a character that kind of resembled a duck-billed dinosaur in the face. He said, “Oh okay, George kind of liked that. And then Doug said, “Okay, here, Terryl, you just take this and run with it and do whatever you want." Doug had more than enough designs that he needed to attend to. So, at that point, I worked, started working really hard on the character, different permutations of duck-billed dinosaur-ness, explored other types of things, but basically kept that idea in mind. This is a character that had to be appealing to young children because they were the next generation of Star Wars fans and unlike when the first movies came out, starting in 1977, where the audience was more like, you know, high school students at first, basically, these would be the children of that generation. And so, these kids were, like, 3 years old, 4 years old, 5 years old, little kids. You don't want to terrify them too much, you know, because bad things happen in Star Wars movies; dismemberment, you're blown up, you're burned to death, you get eaten by something. You know what happens to people in Star Wars movies. When you're a teenager in high school, you know, it's like, oh wow, it's kind of like the Wild West, but little kid… and George had young children at that time. So, when you have a character who's friendly and somehow survives the onslaughts of that universe, that's a safe spot for little children to have. So, he had to kind of fulfill that role as well. And so, you know, George was saying, “Hmm, what is my calculus? Should I try to please everybody, including, you know, the original hardcore Star Wars fans, or shall I look towards the future and capture the younger generation, get ‘em while they're young?" [chuckles] And he chose the latter as far as the character went.
Michael: Right. I was gonna say, as you mentioned, he would have had young children, in particular, I think his son probably is the youngest one. And I know that… I believe I've read articles where it seems like certain words in the film, and I think Jar Jar's name himself, I think that came from some of the some of the words that his son would use.
Terryl Whitlatch: I'm pretty sure, I think that Jett would have been around 5 years old, when I met him, very nice little boy. And then Amanda, the oldest, she was a teenager, and then Katie, the middle one would have been, I don't know, fifth grade, sixth grade, as far as I recall.
Michael: And did they come often, to the art department or just…?
Terryl Whitlatch: Occasionally.
Michael: Occasionally. I mean, that would have been pretty, pretty fun. I guess any of the aspects of that film, that that would be cool.
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, I remember them as being very nice, nice children.
Michael: Reading through some of the art books and interviews from that time that Episode I was released, it sounds like it took about a year and a half of work on Jar Jar before everything was finalized.
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, he was an important character, so he did take a lot of development and tweaking and such. And Iain McCaig did some work on him as well and designed his costume. So yeah, all three of us at various times had our fingerprints on him.
Michael: Okay, so how many how many sketches do you think were done? Like, how much work are we talking, like, hundreds? Thousands?
Terryl Whitlatch: For Jar Jar Binks?
Michael: Yes.
Terryl Whitlatch: Easily, easily, yes. Then after we got to the final design, I met and that day was like, I was so happy when we got to the final design, George signed off on him. Then the real work for me started as well. Part two, I mean, which was to repair it, a designed for Industrial Light & Magic so they could build the character and I needed to design the orthographics of him; the front, the back, the side, all different aspects, the inside of the mouth, the tongue, the palms of the hands, the bottoms of the feet, you name it in complete, complete skeletons, like scientifically accurate skeletons, and then scientifically accurate musculature, just like if you're going to put in a museum, like reconstructing a dinosaur. All of that was then sent over to Industrial Light & Magic so they could model the character, so they create the rig for the character, so they could add the skin texture to the character. Yeah, and for every single creature that I designed for The Phantom Menace, I had to do the same thing. So, Anatomy “R" Us, it was like my middle name. [laughs]
Michael: Well, I always talk about how I want to start like a Jar Jar Museum maybe in retirement. So, I'm wondering maybe if I can somehow obtain those thousands of hundreds, thousands of sketches for the museum. I guess they're probably at Lucasfilm or in the archives or in that…
Terryl Whitlatch: Yes.
Michael: I don't know if they would be in that museum that George Lucas is working on.
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, in LA. I would imagine that… I would guess at some point in time, he might exhibit them. They're very, very carefully archived.
Michael: So, a few questions, which are probably only going to appeal to me, but did you work out all the details of the Gungan species? Did you think about, did you consider, like, I know that he's amphibious, kind of frog-like, I know, you know, frogs are born from eggs. Did you consider, like, are Gungans born from eggs as well?
Terryl Whitlatch: Yes, they're born from eggs.
Michael: They're born from eggs. All right, good. So, do they have like a tadpole phase as well?
Terryl Whitlatch: I am not sure about that. That was something I didn't have time to explore. I did think about it. I actually did design some female Gungans that didn't quite make it into the movie. But you know, it'd be an endless budget and endless… I think if we would still be working on The Phantom Menace if we could do all this, all the ideas that we came up with, [laughs] you know, bring them to full fruition. But yeah, I thought a lot about the biology of all the creatures so that they would make sense because basically, the charm about Star Wars is that we can imagine going there ourselves and actually be able to visit those worlds. And it's basically planet Earth, just tweaked a little bit.
Michael: I would like to… I'm trying to think if I ever saw those sketches of the female Gungans. Are they in the art books? Do you think?
Terryl Whitlatch: I can't remember if they made it into the Art of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace or not. I certainly remember what they looked like. Female Gungans, they were a lot more dainty in their bill, you know, the beak that they have. Their ears were longer, and kind of they could put their ears, like, in a ponytail or something if they wanted to do that.
Michael: Okay. There are a few in the Clone Wars series. I'm wondering if they used your designs for that.
Terryl Whitlatch: Oh! I'd like to know. I probably miss that. Believe it or not, I have not seen every single Star Wars project.
Michael: Well, I did want to ask that actually. And I was wondering, like, what was your connection to Star Wars? Did you, like, did you grow up with it? I guess you probably would have been like a teenager around the time the first film came out. So, did you like them?
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah! They were very different from what had ever gone on before. As far as the state of art technology and a resonance, it's like, “Oh yeah, that reminds me of this. Oh yeah, that reminds you that." You know, Banthas, they look like wooly mammoths with horns. Oh, yeah, those land spears. They look like the 1963 Ford Galaxy that I grew up with. I mean, everything was resonant because they reminded you of things you'd experienced in your life. And it was funny! The movies were funny. There was a certain joie de vivre and it didn't… It was like watching Bonanza in outer space; good guys and bad guys, and it was pretty much black-and-white as far as… It was just a fun thing. You know, like Flash Gordon meets Star Trek, sort of. What really was exciting to me as far as Episode IV-VI was The Empire Strikes Back. What really I thought, “Oh, you know, this would be so cool actually to work on," was when I saw the Tauntauns, Phil Tippett's Tauntauns with the go-motion. Those were beautiful. That was like, "Ahhh," kind of pushed the button right where I needed it. Because again, that got into something that was a realistic animal, moving realistically and beautifully. I thought, “Oh, that's lovely," and I was very fortunate to meet Phil Tippett years later at his studio in Berkeley.
Michael: Oh awesome. Yeah, his work is pretty great and revolutionary in a number of ways.
Terryl Whitlatch: It really is, yeah. He took off where Harryhausen left off.
Michael: All right. A few more questions about Jar Jar. I see that female frogs lay thousands of eggs. Is it possible that Jar Jar has thousands or hundreds of brothers and sisters? Are there…? Have you considered that?
Terryl Whitlatch: It's very possible, sure. I mean, if you look at the Gungan army, there were a lot of Gungans out there.
Michael: So, some of them might be brothers or sisters there?
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, it could be. You know, it depends upon how dangerous that swamp is. [laughs] There are lots of predators in the swamp, especially with the Sando aqua monster at the very top of the chain, he'd eat a lot of Gungans, so I guess they have a lot of kids.
Michael: Oh no!
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah. Actually, the Sando aqua monster in the movie is actually a female, by the way.
Michael: Oh really? Okay. So, how many of those are there in the…?
Terryl Whitlatch: Not that many. They're kind of, I mean, they live a long, long time, centuries. I mean, they're huge. They're very smart. They're basically, I had a tiger in mind when I designed it. I wanted something that had a kind of feline feel, it was really sneaky and lazy and could just basically grab what it wanted to eat. [laughs] But yeah, so it would make sense that Gungans have a rather high reproductive rate.
Michael: Okay. I wanted to ask you about the Blarth, or it's perhaps the Blarf? Do you remember that?
Terryl Whitlatch: Yup! Kind of the Gungan equivalent of a dog?
Michael: Yes. So, is it Blarth or Blarf? Do you know which one it was? T-H or F?
Terryl Whitlatch: Blarth with a T-H, yeah.
Michael: Okay. All right. Because I think I've seen it both ways in possibly official material. All right. So yeah, it's a dog-like creature, which you drew in some sketches with Jar Jar. I don't know how many, but I've seen it in a few. So, is that something you came up with, or is that something that came from George?
Terryl Whitlatch: I came up with that one. The name comes from the sound it makes “Blarth blarth blarth blarth," instead of barking, it “blarths." It has an annoying habit of sleeping in doorways for people, Gungans, to trip over. A lot of times when I was designing, say, a primary character, I would create a little fun creature and just stick it in there with it. A lot of times those little creatures made it into the movie. Like the Nunas, for example, the little bird things that Jabba flicks off the ledge. And I call them “dooders," that was my term for anything I would kind of sneak into a design, to accompany a maiden design. I would just say, “Oh, I'll put a little dooder in there, see what happens, see if George likes it."
Michael: And a lot of times they did make it in the film?
Terryl Whitlatch: Blarth was one of those dooders.
Michael: I believe the Nuna… I think they created, like, a sport out of them or something, Nuna Ball?
Terryl Whitlatch: Oh yeah.
Michael: And I think it might have been in… You're familiar with that?
Terryl Whitlatch: I heard things about that, which is fun. They are rather round. I was inspired by kiwi birds because the kiwis lay these enormous eggs and the Nunas do too.
Michael: So, did the Blarth actually make it into the film? Because that was going to be my question. I was wondering how far along, like— Or at least, I mean, obviously, Jar Jar doesn't have a Blarth, you know, as part of the film. So, I was trying to figure out, like, you know, was there ever a point where… Sorry, go ahead.
Terryl Whitlatch: Never quite made it into the film, because we had so many creatures, like hundreds of creatures in those films. Maybe he appeared somewhere in the Clone Wars or something. Most of my designs eventually surfaced somewhere in the Star Wars kingdom, because it's like, you know, free designs, bang for your buck, you know. So, a lot of the creatures I designed for Phantom Menace actually made in the Clone Wars, like the Anubis and other creatures, a lot of them. Oh yeah! Well, it's nice to see them getting a life there. That's good. You know?
Michael: Yeah, I know that happened with a lot of, like, Ralph McQuarrie stuff. A lot of that stuff eventually finds its way into some film or show. I was going to ask you about that too, because there is a character, Meebur Gascon, are you familiar with that one?
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah. I'm trying to remember which one he is. But yeah.
Michael: So, I think he looks like some of the, there was like a really early design. It was like, I think there were like three of them and they were like frog-like creatures. And I think they were very early versions of Jar Jar or maybe led to Jar Jar.
Terryl Whitlatch: Oh well, I designed some very, very early ones of Jar Jar. He started out looking like a little froggy.
Michael: Yeah.
Terryl Whitlatch: Okay. Now, that one, actually, he started out as a doodle when I was still working at ILM. And that was even before I was hired to work on the prequel movies. I just had some spare time after, I think I was just storyboarded a whole bunch of scenes of the horse and rider from Indian in the Cupboard, and I was like, “Okay, this is a little break." I was just doing doodles and I was feeling kind of frazzled because I was really tired and I drew that. And I just pinned him on my bulletin board of my drawing table there at ILM. And then I took it with me when I was transferred to the Ranch to work on the movie. And that was the genesis, basically, the genesis of Jar Jar, the main essence. Kind of that worried, frantic, little… with the eyes going up and down.
Michael: Yeah, yeah!
Terryl Whitlatch: So, George saw that and liked it. So, that's the genesis of the essence of the character.
Michael: Yeah. And then they took that and then made another character, separate character from that too.
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, of course! It's free!
Michael: All right. I wanted to ask if you're familiar with the Darth Jar Jar theory? Have you heard that?
Terryl Whitlatch: Oh yeah, I am.
Michael: Yes. Do you have any thoughts on that? Do you think it holds any weight?
Terryl Whitlatch: No.
Michael: No? [chuckles]
Terryl Whitlatch: It never was in the cards for him to be like a Darth Sith Knight Evil Jar Jar. That is something that sort of evolved after the movies by fans that wished it were so. So, you know, it's a popular conspiracy theory, and, you know, really when something becomes popular enough and fans wish it were so, eventually, decades later, management says, “Well, I mean, maybe we will indulge them." But it really did was there was never an intention for him to revert to the dark side.
Michael: Yeah, I assumed so. I didn't think there was anything to it. I mean, it's an interesting idea. But I figured by now, if there was any truth to it, something would have come out. Some script would have appeared. The theory seemed to really become popular around 2015 or 2016 after George had already sold to Disney. So, I don't think I've ever seen him interviewed and asked about it. I'm always curious, you know, what he would say, if he would just play along and be like, “Yeah, sure. That's what I was going to do." Or if he'd be like, “No, absolutely not." I mean, Jar Jar is a very pure and good character.
Terryl Whitlatch: He's very innocent.
Michael: Yeah, so I assumed not, but I was just curious on your thoughts. I know they are putting him in that new Lego special that's coming out.
Terryl Whitlatch: Oh yeah, yeah.
Michael: That's a fun nod to the idea, but it is obviously not canon and some sort of alternate thing.
Terryl Whitlatch: I would say it's not canon, at least not at this time. But it does give kind of… It's more of a nod to the fans rather than the character itself. And yeah, it's fun. I mean, people love Star Wars and it's kind of fun to indulge people that love Star Wars too. It's kind of like… yeah. George seemed to welcome people playing in his universe, you know? Like, with The Wildlife of Star Wars, I made up most of the stuff about those creatures, and then we just ran it past George and he said, “Yeah, fine." And so now, that's canon.
Michael: There you go.
Terryl Whitlatch: There you go.
Michael: Yeah, I mean, there were so many novels and, you know, comics that were released starting really in the mid-90s. And it sounds like they largely had a free hand. You know, there were certain areas you would say “These are off limits. I might be exploring them in the prequels." But, you know, for the most part, it sounded like they were able to do most of what they wanted to do, as long as it didn't really interfere.
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah. Like, for example, the relationship between the Banthas and the Sand People, you know, the kind of bond between them; that's something that I made up and then ran it past George and he said, “Yeah, fine!" So, I mean, that's how that happened. And a lot of stuff was—
Michael: I mean, a lot of things reference that, right? Like, I feel like that's kind of in like the, even in The Mandalorian.
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, exactly.
Michael: Awesome.
Terryl Whitlatch: But it's fun. You know, when you have collaboration, it becomes greater than some of its parts and that's cool.
Michael: Besides Jar Jar, you worked on a number of creatures. We talked about the Nunas, Kaadus, Iopes, and characters like Sebulba and Watto. Is there a favorite creature that you worked on or character that you worked on… besides Jar Jar?
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah. Now, I want to give a special shout-out to Doug Chiang because he originated the character of Watto. But what I did with that character was I designed his anatomy and stuff for ILM. So, Doug came up with that concept, so I don't want to take credit for that particular character, I want to give Doug his full credit. I just worked on working out the anatomy for him. But to answer your question, the favorite creature that I worked on for Star Wars was the Sando aqua monster; that's the biggest sea creature, the one that eats everything else that I was referencing.
Michael: Always a bigger fish.
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, the biggest one. Yes. I loved working on that because, “Aha, here is a character that could eat Godzilla for lunch." I love it.
Michael: I'm trying to think if that creature appears anywhere else besides The Phantom Menace. I can't remember if it shows up in the Clone Wars or anything. I guess that gets to one question I do have. Would you be willing to, if Lucasfilm wanted to do, say, a show about Gungans or Jar Jar, and obviously, Sando aqua monster would be there as well? Is that something you'd be interested in?
Terryl Whitlatch: Oh sure, because they're extremely fun characters. It's really fun. Maybe even Blarth could be in it, you never know.
Michael: Oh, yeah. I hope that comes about. I know one or two fans were not necessarily that in love with Jar Jar when Phantom Menace came out, but I definitely feel like there has been a re-examining, and a lot of the kids, as you said, that the people that Jar Jar was really meant for when that film came out, they're older now and they love that character. So, I'm glad to see it in the last couple of years and to see Ahmed Best. I know, it seems like he had a rough time for a while there, but he's seemed to be coming back into the fold and he had that role in The Mandalorian where he's a Jedi and that's really good to see. Yeah, hopefully, things have turned a little bit more, giving Jar Jar and Ahmed Best the love that they deserve.
Terryl Whitlatch: I think so. I think people need to be really, really careful not to let something take over your life to such an extent that you become upset about what's essentially a cartoon character. There are more important things in life. [laughs]
Michael: Yeah, so I hope we see more Jar Jar.
Terryl Whitlatch: I do too.
Michael: I would love a series devoted to the Gungans, the Jar Jar, a movie, whatever. Maybe there can be a musical.
Terryl Whitlatch: That would be really fun and sweet. I think a lot of people would really love to see that and take their kids, their children to see that. I mean, it's sort of like, it reminds me in certain ways of Dr. Seuss characters; they're kind of strange and weird and wonderful at the same time and children love them. The Grinch or the Cat in the Hat. [chuckles]
Michael: Yeah, exactly. So, on your IMDb, it lists you as a creature designer for the game The Gungan Frontier. I was wondering if that's something you worked on directly or was it just because things were based on your artwork?
Terryl Whitlatch: Oh, I worked on that directly.
Michael: Awesome. I never got to play it and now I'm disappointed because I don't think there's a version that would work on, like, modern computers.
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, it was some time ago.
Michael: But it's something I would really like to... I hope they port it to something new, like, do maybe a 30th anniversary at this point because now we're almost done with the 25th anniversary.
Terryl Whitlatch: Augh, that's amazing!
Michael: So, what was that like? Was it designing more creatures and stuff for Naboo?
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, it was creating even more creatures for that planet. Of course, it's a swamp and lots of animals live in the swamp. It was a lot of fun and actually, I was able to put a great deal of those animals into The Wildlife of Star Wars as well. Yeah, it was great. I got to also design different walk and run cycles for them. It's fun. Animation is great anyway. Yeah, that was a fun post-film project to work on.
Michael: Awesome. So, we talked about The Wildlife of Star Wars a number of times. How did that come about? Is it something Lucasfilm asked you to do? Is it something you pitched?
Terryl Whitlatch: I pitched that to Lucasfilm. As the film was wrapping up and I was kind of looking down, planning ahead a bit, I knew I was going to be moving out of state, I thought, “Let's see if we can get a nice project to work on," kind of a carry-over. And I pitched it to them, there's so many animals that were designed for the movies to date, especially the ones that didn't make it into the film. And so, I pitched that and they said, “Yeah! Let's do that." So, they gave me a year. It was like working on the film in fast motion. They gave me a year or two to do the book and it was great. It was fun. And yeah, a lot of things went into canon via that book and the Clone Wars.
Michael: Yeah, I noticed it's not just prequel stuff, you also have creatures from the original movies, Sarlacc and Rancor…
Terryl Whitlatch: Absolutely!
Michael: … Ewoks are in there as well and from those different planets.
Terryl Whitlatch: Banthas.
Michael: Yeah, that's really cool. Unfortunately, it seems like it's not in print anymore. I was trying to find it a couple years ago and it took me a while to get a copy of it.
Terryl Whitlatch: It was in print for a long time, over 20 years in print. So, I'm grateful for that. That's a long time for any book to be in print. Maybe they'll fire up the presses again.
Michael: Yeah, hopefully. So, you said you did do some work for Attack of the Clones, but you were moving out of state so…
Terryl Whitlatch: Yeah, I did just a few designs and then I had been hired by, I was working on a Disney film by then. So, I've been hired by Disney and working on another feature. It was Brother Bear at that time.
Michael: Oh, okay. I did see that in your IMDb. I don't think I've ever seen that movie. Is that live-action or is that…?
Terryl Whitlatch: 2D animation. It's really beautiful, it's a beautiful movie. It was a wonderful experience working on that movie.
Michael: All right. You've got a number of books that you've worked on, including Science of Creature Design and Animals Real and Imagined. Could you talk about them a little bit?
Terryl Whitlatch: I taught for a little while at the Academy of Art University in… oh, the mid-2000s. Animals Real and Imagined actually came out of in-class demonstrations that I did and that would talk about— I taught Wildlife Illustration and Creature Design for both BFA and MFA students. And for each class, I would draw and say, “Okay, now I'm going to draw a cheetah," or “Now I'm going to draw an elephant." And these resulting sketches, I saved them, and we produced them in Animals Real and Imagined. So, those were live in-class drawings and then other demos that were also in connection with the Academy of Art University. So, we just published, it was easy, low-hanging fruit, so we published that. And then that led to the Science of Creature Design and Principles of Creature Design, which are more like textbooks for visual development artists. The first one is establishing what is teaching animal anatomy. The second one picks up and applies those principles of animal anatomy to designing imaginary creatures. Once you have the understanding of anatomy and basic zoology in place, where you have an empathy for real animals, then you can create more convincing creatures that provide that emotional connection with the audience and within the project itself. So, that's really essential when designing either real animal characters or imaginary animal characters so that they seem real. It doesn't matter what the aesthetic is, you want to have that connection.
Michael: Can you talk about anything you're working on now? I know you have a number of deadlines that you've been working on. Is there anything you can talk about? Anything you want to plug?
Terryl Whitlatch: Some things I cannot talk about because they're under NDA. I've been putting the final touches on my most recent book in collaboration with paleontologist Michael Habib, which is about flying animals, how to design and animate flying animals. It's based on science and the most recent developments in paleontology and animal biomechanics. So, that book gets into birds, bats, pterosaurs, and then designing imaginary creatures based on real science. That's been really, really, really, really, really fun. The book is in production right now at the publisher Design Studio Press, and I'm just doing some aesthetic illustrations for borders and chapter headers, things like that. So yeah, that's a very exciting thing. I've got some other book project ideas that I have done the preliminary artwork for. So, I'm really interested in art education and teaching people really how to see. People think they know what animals look like, but they really, really don't. I want to train peoples' eye to be sensitive on how to really see animals for what they are.
Michael: Great. When does that book about the flying creatures come out?
Terryl Whitlatch: It should be out in 2025. I'm just taking in consideration printing and all of that. My estimation is it's probably about early 2025.
Michael: And did you say what the name was or is it...?
Terryl Whitlatch: Well, there's a couple of working titles. We were calling it Flying Monsters for a while, but that's just a working title.
Michael: I was going to ask, do you still keep in touch with anybody from your time at Lucasfilm or have you spoken to George Lucas since you left?
Terryl Whitlatch: No, I haven't spoken with him, although he did write a lovely endorsement for my book, The Katurran Odyssey, which is on the book jacket so that was really, really special. I've stayed in contact, pretty much, with Iain McCaig. And every so often I see my other colleagues, oh, Benton Jew, and I see them from time to time at various conventions and functions like Lightbox in Pasadena. So yeah.
Michael: I mean, I think that's largely everything I wanted to cover. I don't want to keep you too much longer. Is there anything else you wanted to mention about Jar Jar, Star Wars, anything we've talked about, anything I missed?
Terryl Whitlatch: Well, I guess in conclusion, I would say it was an extraordinary time being there at a real milestone in filmmaking where digital characters really carried the film. The film itself was a blend of practical and digital effects, which I think, and George firmly believes that if you have a film that's entirely digital, it doesn't look real. But if you mix in the practical effects with the digital, then that creates a hyperreality. I think the other thing that was extraordinary about that experience is that it's so rare to work on a motion picture for several years. I mean, nonstop on a single production. Usually, it's six months at the most. And to see someone that was able to really fulfill his vision for these films, that's so rare. That is a magical thing. The friendships that I made, what I learned, it just was a spectacular experience. That's, like, a once-in-a-lifetime thing and I'm so grateful, so very, very grateful for that time.
Michael: Very nice. So, I guess, is there anything else you wanted to plug? I guess we talked about the forthcoming things that you have. Is there anything else you wanted to mention?
Terryl Whitlatch: I think that's about it. I think for myself, and something mentioning back to the flying monsters, is that if I can help people to see and appreciate real animals, because they're the teachers for creature design, and they are the real creatures, our fellow travelers on this world. And for people to realize that without them, you wouldn't have Banthas, you wouldn't have banshees, you wouldn't have direhorses, those creatures were designed by my good friend, Neville Page, by the way, not me. I mean, the Banthas were Ralph McQuarrie's, I just elaborated on them. But in any regard, you wouldn't have any of that with the very precious life forms on this world. And that's what I want to leave this talk with: just realize how precious these animals are, and to do what we can to preserve our planet, because there is not another one.
Michael: Excellent. All right. So, thank you so much for speaking with me. I appreciate all the time you took and thank you.
Terryl Whitlatch: You're very welcome. Thank you for inviting me.
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Transcribed by Aveline Malek at TheWordary.com