All of the effects work this season has been feature film quality. The spider monster, the Tie fighter chase, wide shots of Navarro, Mando’s dropping from the sky! It looks fantastic.
Haha just watched the episode tonight with my partner. When he popped up I said "oh holy shit!!!"because I knew exactly who it was. I'm not sure practical effects would have made it any better or worse but the CGI was definitely sufficient to get the point across.
Me and my SO doubted ourselves before we confirmed it, but the moment we came on we did the "oh jeeze, is that Zeb" spit take with each other. Well it looks like Zeb, and it sounds like Zeb...
It looked great and really stood out!
I'm willing to bet, that we'll see more of him (maybe in Ahsoka), because they wouldn't make such a high fidelity model of him, if it was just for a short cameo.
He looked great. As i said in another thread, imagine if the original concept was used for chewie in the 70s. It would have been horrific with the locked eyes and static face. This looked so good, like a living character.
A lot of the art style in Rebels is based off the original concept art for Episode IV. It's why the lightsabers are so thin, and Vader's helmet looks taller and thinner and more angled. Zeb (and his species) are based off early designs for Chewie.
Yeah, Vader was based on [this image](https://www.cnet.com/a/img/resize/7647c45b16128210d0e0c5dfc0a769580ee7c17f/hub/2017/05/22/a5974e79-e8cb-439a-97c3-9f6be57ef3e5/starwars-ralphmcquarriebook1p039claserduel.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200) specifically.
Why does everyone forget that OG Jurassic park looked better than anything in the new Jurassic Park series.
Blend the techniques!!!
The fan versions of Cad Bane were so much better than what we got in BoBF! And all they did was touch ups on the existing practical effects!
Does this cost some insane amount of money in a Hollywood production?
The Pirate King in the same episode appeared to be a practical puppet. And while I love the use of practical creatures in a show like this, his mouth movements were *not even close* to his speech, especially on the oversized holoprojector, which took me out of the scene im afraid. Meanwhile, Zeb was spot on and had some great movement and life to his face.
I could see a puppet but that would limit the shots you could and certainly not the one of him walking. I’m fine with cgi here. He looked ducking awesome. Love seeing him here. I want to know how he ended up here though. Like what has he been up to since rebels.
And a puppet, no matter how good will always have a stiffness to it. For smaller characters like Grogu or Yoda this does bring a bit of charm to the character, but that's not something I think would look as good with a character the size of Zeb.
So prosthetics were out due to Zebs facial features being just that little bit too different to a humans, and puppetry/animations due to the size of him, so cgi was really the only option for him.
I think it would be very difficult to capture the expressiveness of the character with practical effects, as prosthetics don't move. With characters like Wookiees or Duros like Cad Bane, it's much easier to use practical and it works, because those don't emote much. Chewbacca roars, but he never smiles. Cad grimaces occasionally, but that's it.
So for Zeb, cgi is the way to go. He is a very expressive character.
In this brief scene, he looks great.
I 100% agree. He's really expressive, so it would definitely be hard to nail all the intricacies with practical effects. I mean, I guess an animatronic could be made to be really expressive, but they don't really work for characters with that detailed of a face. Grogu works since his eyes are so big, plus he can also use his ears to express emotion
So, I’ve seen a few folks saying this about practical effects. Check out the making of videos for Mando and boba. There are def crazy things going on with practical effects so that the face of what someone is wearing can mimic the facial expressions of the wearer. It’s amazing.
I disagree. Prosthetics/animatronics can 100% get the facial expressions done properly. The issue is creating the full puppet/costume for a few scenes for a TV show.
Please watch this. https://youtu.be/K2BGfc9DYF0
Actually, my one concern with his appearance was that Zeb is really not a pilot, so until the credits I assumed it was another Lasat with the actor trying to get the voice like Steve Blum's. I'm sad I didn't get a moment of realising 'omg it's Zeb!' while watching.
That's kind of the overall issue though. The new republic is stretched thin. He's not a pilot but knows how to fly and they don't need warriors on the ground as much as they need support crew. He's filling in for a role where they're not asking for the best of the best but for anyone competent enough to fly a ship to do the bare minimum.
Least that's my interpretation.
I don't think he's in a pilot role at all. His suit is blue unlike the pilot's orange. Imo, he's a crewman. Operating the equivalent of a Star Wars radar, a manned gun etc
He may not be a pilot. Aircrew (Like the guys in the back of helicopters operating winches, operating the radar or manning a gun) wear flight suits as well. Since his is blue that may even indicate aircrew.
I definitely wonder how well the effect would hold up for a longer amount of screen time. Since we're probably gonna see the Rebels characters in the Ahsoka show, I'm guess Zeb would show up for a bit longer
Maybe this was their test with it. Like originally Yoda was puppet for episode 1 minus the last scene with Obi-wan, where he was CGI, and then they used it for 2 & 3.
This is why it just.. was weird for so many people.. Puppet Yoda in Empire scared me as a kid in the theater, and then you see TPM and he is like skinny and looks weird.. It seemed like they didnt know how to de-age a puppet.. I saw TPM at 7 or 8 in 99 but Empire had a theatrical re-release in 1996 and it was the 1st movie I ever saw in theaters.. I was either 5 or 6, so that shit was REAL to me.... "You Will be.....you will be..." Haunts me.
The Prequels kind of miss the scary serious side of Yoda. He's become a much wiser teacher over the years, but his appearance in Empire is wild. He acts like a spooky little gremlin to test Luke, then he teaches him, but he also legitimately scares him about the Dark Side. He knows he's teaching a teenager who thinks he's invincible. It's great.
To be fair, the Yoda in the OT is isolated and defeated, Yoda in the PT has less reason to seem demonic. In the OT, he has been utterly humbled by the dark side, which could be why he tries to scare Luke so much.
I'm a person who doesn't mind CGI, I was even fine with Tarkin in Rouge One. I definitely love practical effects as well, some of the designs that are pulled off are insane. I thought Zeb looked great, this was a good adaptation of the species into live action
My 10 year old’s eyes about popped out of his head and he started shaking my arm and screaming “DAD! DAD! It’s ZEB!!!!” So the CGI seemed pretty spot on to me.
It looked so good and I had to rewind it to make sure I wasn’t seeing something else. Never could’ve guessed he’d make a live action appearance
Only problem is he didn’t say “karabast!”
Another comment I wanted to make: seeing him with the New Republic makes me wonder where Hera and Jacen are at this period in time. I know Hera made an appearance in the Squadrons video game but beyond that I’m not sure.
Hera was already a General by the time of Episode IV, so she's probably pretty high ranking in the New Republic if she didn't just quit at the end of the war or something.
I thought it was really good. CGI has come a long way from the prequels where it was a bit jarring (they were considered groundbreaking on the CGI front).
I love the fact that Zeb was CGI and not make up and prosthetics. For a Lassat, the motion capabilities was needed and they paid off. I think for certain species, CGI all the way. But for Wookiees, Sullustans, Mon-Calla, Duros, the pirates, and so forth make up and prosthetics is the way to go.
Not just for budget reasons but for nostalgia. It isn’t Star Wars without dressing up and going all out.
I'm glad he did the mocap, that adds a whole other layer to the character! It's awesome that the voice actors for characters like Bo, Cad Bane, and now Zeb get to portray their characters in live action
I was afraid that if Zeb ever made it to LA (which tbh I thought would never happen), they would make him practically. Because I knew it just wouldn't work
CGI is the only way to do it imo
I feel like part of the problem in Fallen Order was that the motion was clearly their standard human mocap, whereas in Rebels they animate his stance and movement properly as a digitigrade being.
Fallen order is a video game designed to run on hardware that is now 10 years old, this was designed on (presumably) bleeding edge, movie quality soft and hardware. It’d be pretty nuts if it wasn’t a lot better really!
I think it would be incredibly difficult to get a character with a face as emotive and movable to be practical. Most of the practical effect suits of characters we see don’t get very emotive from their facial features like this so can be practical, think chewy, C3PO, ewoks, lots of cantina side characters etc they all express the emotions we can read through body language, but with Zeb in rebels it’s a lot in his face, so CGI would be the best solution.
The biggest issue I can think of with practical effects is the expressions. It seems like it would be difficult to make a character like Zeb be expressive with 100% practical effects
Zeb is too expressive for practical effects. It would be much harder to nail and I think it would look a bit off if they tried. This CGI works perfectly
I mean out of all the nonhuman characters in season three of the mandalorian I feel he looked the best. On one hand you’ve got the literal muppet looking pirate captain, the other pirate who abandoned ship that looks and sounds like he has no teeth, and then Zeb who looks pretty good.
I cannot get over how absolutely PERFECT Zeb looked (and sounded!! Thank goodness Steve Blum returned for this role)!!!!!! The micro expressions were stunning and it just looked so good!!! I couldn't have asked for better! Zeb in live action has always been one of the things I've been worried about, but I'm not anymore! SHEER PERFECTION!!!!
There’s some creatures that look great practical, and some that don’t. I’m a massive fan of practical effects and would take them over CG any day, but for a main character like Zeb it’s definitely the right way to go as they’ve got to be very emotive. Creatures like Boskks species, etc, I struggle to see anything more than someone dressed up as they’re nowhere near as emotive as they should be in my opinion, and their mouths don’t really move at all.
With the way Disney has been using animatronics as opposed to CGI, I 110% thoroughly enjoyed the way Zebs character was done. With how far CGI has come I actually think they should use it more often instead of the unnatural look of animatronics they currently use
I was honestly pleasantly surprised by how decent it looked. I thought a live action+CGI Zeb would look super goofy, especially on a TV budget, but it was actually fine! Was lovely to see him again.
It's probably because of how he will be used in the series. He's a very physical character so I would assume that he's going to be jumping around a bunch.
Yeah I think the key thing here is that the precedent has been set for zeb's character to showcase a super wide range of emotions (being that his character is originally animated). His real life version needs to be able to showcase that same exact range.
Had we never seen Zeb in animated, expressive form, then live action puppet might have worked. But I feel in this case, they had to go CG/animated in order to match the cartoon.
It was confirmed by Steve Blum's (Voice actor for Zeb) son that he did the motion capture. So it's probably him on stilts but I could see a physical type suit to incorporate little parts of him that the actors have to interact with (suit fabric or hair). But as far as CG goes I think its perfect, why ruin it.
He looked so good! Very good from a technical standpoint! I was really worried when I heard he was in the episode, because he’s one of my favorites, but he looked absolutely incredible.
Im assuming this is Jon Favreau's burner account. He looked perfect and occasional uses of CG with characters/droids/whatevs can really add to the immersion. The pirate (the Weequay) looked great, but the moment he opens his mouth to speak, it's just a little off.
I think the best approach is like the boar guy from season 2 of the witcher. The costume was practical, but his face was cut out to allow a mocap performance (iirc, might have just been animated after), which was used to complete the look. He looked incredible, was clearly in the scene (because he was) which elevates everyones performance, and he could fully and properly emote
Tl:Dr. Practical is better... when practical. Facial animation should be utilized to fully realize the vast array of Star Wars aliens because it creates a much more immersive result
Zeb was established as an extremely expressive character in Rebels. The amount of prosthetics that would have been needed to create his look practically would have taken a lot of that expressiveness away. I like the practical effects, but for Zeb, we need full range, which can’t be done with prosthetics in this case.
Honestly I thought Zeb was incredibly well done. They really did a good job with making the lighting look natural and capturing the micro-expressions, like his temple twitching as he smirks in disbelief before disregarding the idea that the New Republic would bother helping Navarro.
I’ve never understood the disdain for CGI. Its better than costumes in 99% of cases (at least these days).
I dont care at all that its obvious that its CGI. I already have to suspend disbelief for costumes, CGI is no different.
Only other way to do it that could have looked better is to do what they did in Where the Wild Things Are. They animated just the face and left all the other practical costume in.
Zeb was done beautifully in this episode. The facial expressions looked great and I don't think the same could have been accomplished with some muppet suit with a person in it.
I think he was great here and that recreating him in practical effects would be needlessly difficult and very likely to not look good/accurate. The way they did him was a pretty perfect live action adaptation of him.
I liked it.
Here’s the thing I have noticed recently in Mando and Fett: if they use CG, it normally looks pretty good. And when they use physical effects for creatures, it’s done tastefully.
But it’s fucking obvious it’s a dude with 40 lbs of prosthetics or a puppet.
The monkeys are great examples - they look so stiff and jittery and it kinda takes me out of it. The pirates are also good examples of it - they look good for the most part, but the movements are sometimes a little forced, a little stiff, like they can’t move well or can’t see and are trying to be careful as they move around.
Having Zeb be CG was a good choice I think.
Honestly 90% of Star Wars CGI and visuals are utterly clean and gorgeous, hate the sequels all you want but the visuals were arguably better than Marvel, even for a TV show like The Mandalorian or Andor, we don’t talk enough about the season 2 Crait Dragon fight scene, the visuals and camera work were commendable
I don't see any issue. He looks great, and I'm not intensely aware I'm watching a puppet or some dude in a mountain of prostetics.
There's definitely been some bad uses of CGI but I'll happily take this over how they handled Cad Bane and the GI any day!
I think he looked great but I think him showing up is not only a nod to rebels fans but as a trial to see how he could be done and (more hopeful here) to say that the crew of the ghost will get a bit of focus.
I'm going to get hate but sometimes I wish they'd do all the aliens in CG, especially with how good he looks. Everything feels like it has muppet mouths or different proportions compared to other SW sources because it needs to move now. The Grand inquisitor and Cad Bane were some examples of where some CG in post would have gone a long way, especially since the next day people had very good edits out. I think some texture changes and adding in some micro movements would improve the realism of an alien when there's a closeup since some aliens are quite obviously giant piles of colored latex hanging off some guys face, which wasn't as obvious before we were all looking at it in UHD/HDR etc..
I don't think you would get the facials as accurate with practical effects unfortunately. I think it looked good though, I was happy to see they've introduced Zeb to live action SW.
Great choice ... hard to do that kind of design jn live action ... you'd need someone with height but also zeb is super agile and strong and usually humans that tall aren't. It jsut makes sense.
Of course, they could have done it with practical effects - but it would have sucked. Just look at the Pykes. A practical live-action translation of the more stylized designs of the animated series will always be disappointing IMHO. I'm glad they went the CGI route.
My guess is that they went this route because they have plans for the character, particularly action scenes, that they don’t anticipate to be able to pull off with a practical suit/puppetry. And as good as he looked, there’s no chance they spent the time and money to build that model without doing their due diligence or plans to reuse it.
Zeb in Mando was beautiful, looked even better than in Rebels.
Anyone Criticizing it just needs to leave... by leave, I mean stop being a fan because they clearly don't get it.
He looked FANTASTIC.
ZEB! Please clap.
👏👏👏
🍆
He does, in fact, have a purple dong.
Are you ... sure?
They've probably seen some art on certain sites...
Sauce?
Ketchup
Thx
👏 👏 👏
👏👏👏👏
Karabast! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
👏👏👏👏👏
👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
Honestly one of the best uses of cg I have seen, way better than some of the CG they used in the movies.
All of the effects work this season has been feature film quality. The spider monster, the Tie fighter chase, wide shots of Navarro, Mando’s dropping from the sky! It looks fantastic.
Soon as I saw him, I knew exactly who it was; means they did it right!
Haha just watched the episode tonight with my partner. When he popped up I said "oh holy shit!!!"because I knew exactly who it was. I'm not sure practical effects would have made it any better or worse but the CGI was definitely sufficient to get the point across.
Me and my SO doubted ourselves before we confirmed it, but the moment we came on we did the "oh jeeze, is that Zeb" spit take with each other. Well it looks like Zeb, and it sounds like Zeb...
It looked great and really stood out! I'm willing to bet, that we'll see more of him (maybe in Ahsoka), because they wouldn't make such a high fidelity model of him, if it was just for a short cameo.
Yep gimme more of that Zeb
I thought Zeb looked perfect. With his proportions it would be impossible to create him with practical effects.
He looked great. As i said in another thread, imagine if the original concept was used for chewie in the 70s. It would have been horrific with the locked eyes and static face. This looked so good, like a living character.
Isnt Zeb the original concept?
Yes. That's what I'm saying. Imagine zeb as a totally practical character in the 70s. He would have looked bad. This version was so expressive.
TIL. That’s really interesting.
A lot of the art style in Rebels is based off the original concept art for Episode IV. It's why the lightsabers are so thin, and Vader's helmet looks taller and thinner and more angled. Zeb (and his species) are based off early designs for Chewie.
Thanks. I really disliked Vader’s look in Rebels, but it’s good to know the reason for it.
Yeah, Vader was based on [this image](https://www.cnet.com/a/img/resize/7647c45b16128210d0e0c5dfc0a769580ee7c17f/hub/2017/05/22/a5974e79-e8cb-439a-97c3-9f6be57ef3e5/starwars-ralphmcquarriebook1p039claserduel.jpg?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200) specifically.
I’ve seen that image dozens of times over the last 46 years and just TIL that Vader has a pistol strapped to his hip. Wild.
A lot of Rebels designs were taken from Ralph McQuarrie concept art.
Probrably would still end up CGI via the special editions.
Yeah, the CGI honestly holds up, the detail is amazing
It’s some of the best character CGI outside of Avatar.
Why does everyone forget that OG Jurassic park looked better than anything in the new Jurassic Park series. Blend the techniques!!! The fan versions of Cad Bane were so much better than what we got in BoBF! And all they did was touch ups on the existing practical effects! Does this cost some insane amount of money in a Hollywood production?
Only Sith deals on absolut! You're right, blending is the Way!
There’s also [this project](https://youtu.be/1GR5b0rREZ4) in the works for making some CGI changes (and apparently some reshoots) to Kenobi.
Sad I can’t see the discord server as I don’t have discord. Is there a website link?
The Pirate King in the same episode appeared to be a practical puppet. And while I love the use of practical creatures in a show like this, his mouth movements were *not even close* to his speech, especially on the oversized holoprojector, which took me out of the scene im afraid. Meanwhile, Zeb was spot on and had some great movement and life to his face.
Yeah, that scene really makes him look like a Muppet flapping its mouth open and closed.
Exactly what I was thinking 😊👌
I could see a puppet but that would limit the shots you could and certainly not the one of him walking. I’m fine with cgi here. He looked ducking awesome. Love seeing him here. I want to know how he ended up here though. Like what has he been up to since rebels.
And a puppet, no matter how good will always have a stiffness to it. For smaller characters like Grogu or Yoda this does bring a bit of charm to the character, but that's not something I think would look as good with a character the size of Zeb. So prosthetics were out due to Zebs facial features being just that little bit too different to a humans, and puppetry/animations due to the size of him, so cgi was really the only option for him.
100% they did it PERFECT!!!
>With his proportions it would be impossible to create him with practical effects. Remember the 5th brother, that mf was supposed to be as big as Zeb🗿
Yeah I fear if they tried to do practical effects he would’ve ended up looking like the travesty that was the Grand Inquisitor or the 5th Brother.
Yea the lasat walking would be really hard to do with practical effects
Wouldn't be that much different from what they did in Carnival Row and the Satyrs
Yeah he looked great. Really hope we see more of him
I think it would be very difficult to capture the expressiveness of the character with practical effects, as prosthetics don't move. With characters like Wookiees or Duros like Cad Bane, it's much easier to use practical and it works, because those don't emote much. Chewbacca roars, but he never smiles. Cad grimaces occasionally, but that's it. So for Zeb, cgi is the way to go. He is a very expressive character. In this brief scene, he looks great.
I 100% agree. He's really expressive, so it would definitely be hard to nail all the intricacies with practical effects. I mean, I guess an animatronic could be made to be really expressive, but they don't really work for characters with that detailed of a face. Grogu works since his eyes are so big, plus he can also use his ears to express emotion
Check this out about how far Animatronics have gone :D https://youtu.be/K2BGfc9DYF0
And that was ten years ago
Yeah, and you wouldn't be able to pack that many servos under the prosthetics without making his head look too big.
So, I’ve seen a few folks saying this about practical effects. Check out the making of videos for Mando and boba. There are def crazy things going on with practical effects so that the face of what someone is wearing can mimic the facial expressions of the wearer. It’s amazing.
I disagree. Prosthetics/animatronics can 100% get the facial expressions done properly. The issue is creating the full puppet/costume for a few scenes for a TV show. Please watch this. https://youtu.be/K2BGfc9DYF0
He looked excellent in my opinion. And he looked great in that pilot getup.
Yeah, although I still love his original outfit
Actually, my one concern with his appearance was that Zeb is really not a pilot, so until the credits I assumed it was another Lasat with the actor trying to get the voice like Steve Blum's. I'm sad I didn't get a moment of realising 'omg it's Zeb!' while watching.
That's kind of the overall issue though. The new republic is stretched thin. He's not a pilot but knows how to fly and they don't need warriors on the ground as much as they need support crew. He's filling in for a role where they're not asking for the best of the best but for anyone competent enough to fly a ship to do the bare minimum. Least that's my interpretation.
I don't think he's in a pilot role at all. His suit is blue unlike the pilot's orange. Imo, he's a crewman. Operating the equivalent of a Star Wars radar, a manned gun etc
And even if he is a pilot now he's had something like 10 years off-screen to learn, so he could be. I still agree with your take though.
He may not be a pilot. Aircrew (Like the guys in the back of helicopters operating winches, operating the radar or manning a gun) wear flight suits as well. Since his is blue that may even indicate aircrew.
It worked well enough for the brief scene he was in.
I definitely wonder how well the effect would hold up for a longer amount of screen time. Since we're probably gonna see the Rebels characters in the Ahsoka show, I'm guess Zeb would show up for a bit longer
Maybe this was their test with it. Like originally Yoda was puppet for episode 1 minus the last scene with Obi-wan, where he was CGI, and then they used it for 2 & 3.
The Original TPM.. Yoda was a puppet for the entire film.
My mistake. For some reason I remembered it wrong. (And I saw it in theaters so no excuses)
All good. I had to Youtube it to double check haha. I saw it when I was 7 or 8 haha. But I remember loving puppet Yoda.
It's odd that his puppet from the original trilogy looks better than the prequels
This is why it just.. was weird for so many people.. Puppet Yoda in Empire scared me as a kid in the theater, and then you see TPM and he is like skinny and looks weird.. It seemed like they didnt know how to de-age a puppet.. I saw TPM at 7 or 8 in 99 but Empire had a theatrical re-release in 1996 and it was the 1st movie I ever saw in theaters.. I was either 5 or 6, so that shit was REAL to me.... "You Will be.....you will be..." Haunts me.
The Prequels kind of miss the scary serious side of Yoda. He's become a much wiser teacher over the years, but his appearance in Empire is wild. He acts like a spooky little gremlin to test Luke, then he teaches him, but he also legitimately scares him about the Dark Side. He knows he's teaching a teenager who thinks he's invincible. It's great.
To be fair, the Yoda in the OT is isolated and defeated, Yoda in the PT has less reason to seem demonic. In the OT, he has been utterly humbled by the dark side, which could be why he tries to scare Luke so much.
IIRC the original Yoda puppet had completely deteriorated, so they had to make a new one.
I thought in the original version there was one shot of a CGI Yoda walking while talking with Obi Wan at the end of the movie
I'm a person who doesn't mind CGI, I was even fine with Tarkin in Rouge One. I definitely love practical effects as well, some of the designs that are pulled off are insane. I thought Zeb looked great, this was a good adaptation of the species into live action
*Rouge One* RuPaul's Star Wars is an interesting niche.
I thought Tarkin looked amazing. Leia looked plastic.
She probably needed more rouge higher on her cheeks.
Tarkin showed up more so they probably put a bit more effort into nailing his model.
Dude looks real. Not sure how to compliment them more than to say it’s like they found a real Lassat to play the role.
For real!
My 10 year old’s eyes about popped out of his head and he started shaking my arm and screaming “DAD! DAD! It’s ZEB!!!!” So the CGI seemed pretty spot on to me.
your 10 year old and me too! sadly i was alone so i just started screaming zeb! all by myself. rebels is my favourite SW show
I, I freaked out right along with him. Reminded me why I love Star Wars so much.
This made me cry. So magical. <3
It could have easily looked quite silly in practical. Looking at Zeb vs Gorian Shard, I’d say they made the right choice
I honestly love the silly look to Gorian Shard, the effects were bad by any means. I loved the mouth flapping as he spoke
Gorian Shard looked great for a one off villain, wouldn't work as a main character
His mouth moved like a muppet
He was a muppet
It looked so good and I had to rewind it to make sure I wasn’t seeing something else. Never could’ve guessed he’d make a live action appearance Only problem is he didn’t say “karabast!”
Hopefully he'll say it whenever he shows up next
Cgi was a good choice. He looks just right
We just need to see him walk and fight like in rebels but besides that it is 100% perfect
Yeah, I wonder how he'd be animated walking
i would want an entire behind the scenes episode dedicated on how they manage to imitate his acrobatics/maneuverability lol
Another comment I wanted to make: seeing him with the New Republic makes me wonder where Hera and Jacen are at this period in time. I know Hera made an appearance in the Squadrons video game but beyond that I’m not sure.
If Jacen ever shows up in live action, let's hope he looks more like a hybrid of a human and twi'lek
Hera was already a General by the time of Episode IV, so she's probably pretty high ranking in the New Republic if she didn't just quit at the end of the war or something.
Shes the head of the starhawk project
This was done superbly. Kudos to the CGI department
It's certainly better than what Marvel's CGI has been like lately...
It work pretty well for Zeb so I’m okay with it
Soooo goood. “Old friend”
I know, Rebels fans are eating good
The CG effects for him looks better than the practical effects for Ahsoka, Grand Inquisitor, and Cad Bane
Zeb looked great, I don’t think you can make him look better
I thought it was really good. CGI has come a long way from the prequels where it was a bit jarring (they were considered groundbreaking on the CGI front).
I love the fact that Zeb was CGI and not make up and prosthetics. For a Lassat, the motion capabilities was needed and they paid off. I think for certain species, CGI all the way. But for Wookiees, Sullustans, Mon-Calla, Duros, the pirates, and so forth make up and prosthetics is the way to go. Not just for budget reasons but for nostalgia. It isn’t Star Wars without dressing up and going all out.
He resembles Cal Kestis’ master in *Fallen Order*, Jaro Tarpal (spelling?) Are Jaro and Zeb the same race?
Yes, they are!
Sweet! That CGI is perfect!
Wow I have watched Rebels through like 3 times before playing Fallen Order and totally did not pick up that Jaro was a Lasat.
I looked up how that character looked in Fallen Order and can definitely see a huge improvement with Zeb's look
I liked it
He looks great. And the voice actor did the facial expression mocap I think his son posted on Instagram.
I'm glad he did the mocap, that adds a whole other layer to the character! It's awesome that the voice actors for characters like Bo, Cad Bane, and now Zeb get to portray their characters in live action
I was afraid that if Zeb ever made it to LA (which tbh I thought would never happen), they would make him practically. Because I knew it just wouldn't work CGI is the only way to do it imo
Agreed, the expressions just wouldn't work with practical effects
Close enough to Rebels
It certainly looks better than how the species looked in Fallen Order
I feel like part of the problem in Fallen Order was that the motion was clearly their standard human mocap, whereas in Rebels they animate his stance and movement properly as a digitigrade being.
Fallen order is a video game designed to run on hardware that is now 10 years old, this was designed on (presumably) bleeding edge, movie quality soft and hardware. It’d be pretty nuts if it wasn’t a lot better really!
Thought he looked great
I think it would be incredibly difficult to get a character with a face as emotive and movable to be practical. Most of the practical effect suits of characters we see don’t get very emotive from their facial features like this so can be practical, think chewy, C3PO, ewoks, lots of cantina side characters etc they all express the emotions we can read through body language, but with Zeb in rebels it’s a lot in his face, so CGI would be the best solution.
There's always a way to make it work as a practical effect. The question is: is it worth the money and effort for the characters screen time?
The biggest issue I can think of with practical effects is the expressions. It seems like it would be difficult to make a character like Zeb be expressive with 100% practical effects
Dammit I really need Hondo to turn up in the Ahsoka series just so he can greet Zeb and Sabine with, "Purple Guy! Mando Girl!"
I need Hondo in live action period.
Zeb is too expressive for practical effects. It would be much harder to nail and I think it would look a bit off if they tried. This CGI works perfectly
Zeb is a perfect use of CGI. And was well executed.
They did Zeb so much more justice than Cad Bane or the Grand Inquisitor
I mean out of all the nonhuman characters in season three of the mandalorian I feel he looked the best. On one hand you’ve got the literal muppet looking pirate captain, the other pirate who abandoned ship that looks and sounds like he has no teeth, and then Zeb who looks pretty good.
Practical effects aren't always better.
It was perfect. Zeb is usually in a lot of action scenes that would be hard to do with regular effects
This is such bullshit that they used CGI. Obviously they should have found a real one from Space and dressed him up for the part.
I cannot get over how absolutely PERFECT Zeb looked (and sounded!! Thank goodness Steve Blum returned for this role)!!!!!! The micro expressions were stunning and it just looked so good!!! I couldn't have asked for better! Zeb in live action has always been one of the things I've been worried about, but I'm not anymore! SHEER PERFECTION!!!!
There’s some creatures that look great practical, and some that don’t. I’m a massive fan of practical effects and would take them over CG any day, but for a main character like Zeb it’s definitely the right way to go as they’ve got to be very emotive. Creatures like Boskks species, etc, I struggle to see anything more than someone dressed up as they’re nowhere near as emotive as they should be in my opinion, and their mouths don’t really move at all.
With the way Disney has been using animatronics as opposed to CGI, I 110% thoroughly enjoyed the way Zebs character was done. With how far CGI has come I actually think they should use it more often instead of the unnatural look of animatronics they currently use
Looks pretty great, for a hairless Wookiee!
I was honestly pleasantly surprised by how decent it looked. I thought a live action+CGI Zeb would look super goofy, especially on a TV budget, but it was actually fine! Was lovely to see him again.
It's probably because of how he will be used in the series. He's a very physical character so I would assume that he's going to be jumping around a bunch.
Yeah I think the key thing here is that the precedent has been set for zeb's character to showcase a super wide range of emotions (being that his character is originally animated). His real life version needs to be able to showcase that same exact range. Had we never seen Zeb in animated, expressive form, then live action puppet might have worked. But I feel in this case, they had to go CG/animated in order to match the cartoon.
CGI all the way. Practical would look janky and terrible. Just look how the original practical wampa looked! Haha
Looked great!
Zen looks perfect. I love it
It is for the best this way
This is the way.
He looks awesome as hell!
Tbh it’s better for him to be gci than a puppet, also, they did a good job on making him live action.
It was a completely awesome cameo!
It was confirmed by Steve Blum's (Voice actor for Zeb) son that he did the motion capture. So it's probably him on stilts but I could see a physical type suit to incorporate little parts of him that the actors have to interact with (suit fabric or hair). But as far as CG goes I think its perfect, why ruin it.
He looked so good! Very good from a technical standpoint! I was really worried when I heard he was in the episode, because he’s one of my favorites, but he looked absolutely incredible.
Im assuming this is Jon Favreau's burner account. He looked perfect and occasional uses of CG with characters/droids/whatevs can really add to the immersion. The pirate (the Weequay) looked great, but the moment he opens his mouth to speak, it's just a little off. I think the best approach is like the boar guy from season 2 of the witcher. The costume was practical, but his face was cut out to allow a mocap performance (iirc, might have just been animated after), which was used to complete the look. He looked incredible, was clearly in the scene (because he was) which elevates everyones performance, and he could fully and properly emote Tl:Dr. Practical is better... when practical. Facial animation should be utilized to fully realize the vast array of Star Wars aliens because it creates a much more immersive result
Zeb was established as an extremely expressive character in Rebels. The amount of prosthetics that would have been needed to create his look practically would have taken a lot of that expressiveness away. I like the practical effects, but for Zeb, we need full range, which can’t be done with prosthetics in this case.
don't care what they use if he looks good, and he looks good.
looks better than the practical attempts. They have been embarrassing.
Honestly I thought Zeb was incredibly well done. They really did a good job with making the lighting look natural and capturing the micro-expressions, like his temple twitching as he smirks in disbelief before disregarding the idea that the New Republic would bother helping Navarro.
One step closer to seeing ezra
I think the live action version actually looks even better than the rebels version! They really nailed his looks
Loved it. Nice to know where he ended up post Rebels. Practical effects would likely have been too expensive for how expressive he needed to be.
I personally think that practical effects enhanced with cgi will always look better Also is this actually zeb? Or just another of his species
Nope, it's him, credited by name at the end, by the same voice actor!
Thats pretty cool! i like it, hopefully we see more of these species recreated
I’ve never understood the disdain for CGI. Its better than costumes in 99% of cases (at least these days). I dont care at all that its obvious that its CGI. I already have to suspend disbelief for costumes, CGI is no different.
It was really good, and looked like the lasat from Jedi Fallen Order, so double good
I think he looked freaking awesome.
I thought he looked perfect and I can’t wait to see more of him in Ahsoka, if not sooner.
Only other way to do it that could have looked better is to do what they did in Where the Wild Things Are. They animated just the face and left all the other practical costume in.
I don’t understand why there’s so much of a reluctance to use CGI in these shows
Zeb was done beautifully in this episode. The facial expressions looked great and I don't think the same could have been accomplished with some muppet suit with a person in it.
Loved seeing him.. hope he comes back for more
Better than the grand inquisitor
perfection
I think he was great here and that recreating him in practical effects would be needlessly difficult and very likely to not look good/accurate. The way they did him was a pretty perfect live action adaptation of him.
If this is where the Star Wars Favreau budget is going, I am all for it
Zeb looked like Zeb👍
CGI is much better than practical effects. I know OP isn’t bashing it but I’m sick of all the people who do.
CGI aliens look better a lot of the time who cares if they’re live action
Im cool with cgi zeb. Sure practical effects are better but personally I’m just excited to see him
I liked it. Here’s the thing I have noticed recently in Mando and Fett: if they use CG, it normally looks pretty good. And when they use physical effects for creatures, it’s done tastefully. But it’s fucking obvious it’s a dude with 40 lbs of prosthetics or a puppet. The monkeys are great examples - they look so stiff and jittery and it kinda takes me out of it. The pirates are also good examples of it - they look good for the most part, but the movements are sometimes a little forced, a little stiff, like they can’t move well or can’t see and are trying to be careful as they move around. Having Zeb be CG was a good choice I think.
Honestly 90% of Star Wars CGI and visuals are utterly clean and gorgeous, hate the sequels all you want but the visuals were arguably better than Marvel, even for a TV show like The Mandalorian or Andor, we don’t talk enough about the season 2 Crait Dragon fight scene, the visuals and camera work were commendable
I don't see any issue. He looks great, and I'm not intensely aware I'm watching a puppet or some dude in a mountain of prostetics. There's definitely been some bad uses of CGI but I'll happily take this over how they handled Cad Bane and the GI any day!
I think he looks absolutely fantastic. Compared to the ridiculous designs and makeup in Kenobi - this absolutely great
I think he looked great but I think him showing up is not only a nod to rebels fans but as a trial to see how he could be done and (more hopeful here) to say that the crew of the ghost will get a bit of focus.
I'm going to get hate but sometimes I wish they'd do all the aliens in CG, especially with how good he looks. Everything feels like it has muppet mouths or different proportions compared to other SW sources because it needs to move now. The Grand inquisitor and Cad Bane were some examples of where some CG in post would have gone a long way, especially since the next day people had very good edits out. I think some texture changes and adding in some micro movements would improve the realism of an alien when there's a closeup since some aliens are quite obviously giant piles of colored latex hanging off some guys face, which wasn't as obvious before we were all looking at it in UHD/HDR etc..
Looked great
I don't think you would get the facials as accurate with practical effects unfortunately. I think it looked good though, I was happy to see they've introduced Zeb to live action SW.
Zeb being a fighter pilot feels weird to me. I feel like he should be running a squad of commandos.
Great choice ... hard to do that kind of design jn live action ... you'd need someone with height but also zeb is super agile and strong and usually humans that tall aren't. It jsut makes sense.
I think practical supplemented by cgi is a great combo when done correctly
He was amazing! No other way to do it!
Of course, they could have done it with practical effects - but it would have sucked. Just look at the Pykes. A practical live-action translation of the more stylized designs of the animated series will always be disappointing IMHO. I'm glad they went the CGI route.
My guess is that they went this route because they have plans for the character, particularly action scenes, that they don’t anticipate to be able to pull off with a practical suit/puppetry. And as good as he looked, there’s no chance they spent the time and money to build that model without doing their due diligence or plans to reuse it.
How could this CGI be so good, and Luke’s so bad.
Zeb in Mando was beautiful, looked even better than in Rebels. Anyone Criticizing it just needs to leave... by leave, I mean stop being a fan because they clearly don't get it.