One of the most impressive achievements in The "Star Wars Holiday Special" was the creature make-up. Stan Winston created Chewbacca's family using leading-edge technology. (Winston was not involved in all of the special effects make-up for the show. According to Miki Herman, Don Post Chewbacca masks were used for the Wookiee crowd scene at the climax. For the recreation of the famous Star Wars cantina, Lucasfilm provided the original masks while Rick Baker and crew provided some new characters).
Several people had input into the Wookiee's design. Many of their characteristics can be attributed to Ralph McQuarrie. "I drew an old Wookiee getting up out of his chair and several females and children," he says. Stan Winston and his colleagues also contributed to the designs. Recalls Tom Burman: "I helped [Stan] with some ideas for the hair on the Wookiees' bodies and my brother Ellis Burman worked with him on the mechanical faces."
Winston describes his work on the show, which he considers a pivotal point in his career:
"It was quite an opportunity for me. I was able to use a Stuart Freeborn concept, which was very in inspirational to me and my whole career, as a spring board to advance the technology in the direction of where we are today. Stuart had developed the lip articulation for the apes in 2001 and then had created Chewbacca for Star Wars. For the "Holiday Special" they had to have this family of Wookiees and, to my good fortune, Stuart wasn't available. I had done some lip articulation on The Wiz with the flying monkeys, and this was a chance to take it a step further. The production company sent me the original Chewbacca head so I was able to look at it and see how Stuart had originally done it. I used that as my inspiration to take it to another level, where I could put some expressions into the faces besides having the mouths open and pull back. It allowed me to move into the animatronic face phase of my career."
