Tauntaun

Luke Skywalker’s trusty steed in 1980’s “Empire Strikes Back,” the tauntaun, was nearly going to be a puppet with as many as three actors inside it, according to StarWars.com. But instead, designer Phil Tippett employed stop-motion technology, the same frame-by-frame style of animation used in children’s movies such as the “Wallace and Gromit” series. It marked the first major movie to employ stop-motion techniques since “King Kong” in 1933.