Nick Maley

Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope.

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Nick Maley is a creature effects make-up artist. He worked on Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope and Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back.

Biography

In 1976, Nick Maley joined Stuart Freeborn's team of seven make-up artists in England creating the creatures for the principle photography of the Chalmun's Spaceport Cantina. He worked with Freeborn for seven years. On A New Hope, he contributed to Chewbacca, Snaggletooth (Takeel, Zutton and others), the Crockers (Hrchek Kal Fas, Sai'torr Kal Fas and others) the Rat Alien (Snitch Garindan), Bat Alien (Kabe), Walrus creature (Mosep Binneed), Dr. Cornelius Evazan, Wuher the barman, Dannik Jerriko, the Ugly with the bubble pipe, The Fly Alien (aka Tzizvvt), Ponda Baba and Greedo.

He was a senior creature FX artist on Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back working on the Wampa, the Full size Tauntaun, designing the Mynock puppet head, preparing the Yoda molds for Freeborn,^[1] and creating a second talking Yoda puppet used in 90% of Yoda's scenes when the prototype had mechanical problems. Maley's work on Yoda is described by producer Robert Watts as "fixed the whole thing".^[2] He also designed Nogard, a "lost dragon" from Dagobah that ultimately was not used in the film.^[3]

He was honored by Lucasfilm at Star Wars Celebration Anaheim, 2015, when Lucasfilm Pablo Hidalgo and creature conservationist Tom Spina officially renamed one of the Mos Eisley Cantina characters "Damono Deomaley" as a tribute to Maley's work on the sequence and his help in compiling behind the scenes information.

In 2016 he completed rebuilding an animatronic Yoda puppet using the same principles as the 1978 original and was invited to exhibit that at Star Wars Celebration Europe in London.