How one VFX studio brought The Mandalorian's blurrgs to life

About halfway through the first episode of The Mandalorian, shortly after that titular character lands on the desert-like planet of Arvala-7, our helmeted hero makes an admission to Kuiil, a friendly Ugnaught who’s just come to his rescue. 

“I don’t know how to ride blurrg.”

That line, uttered casually by the Mandalorian, sets up what has become one of the more memorable and possibly iconic moments from Disney’s latest entry into the vast Star Wars canon: the taming of the blurrg. 

“We call [them] the piranha tadpoles,” says Goran Backman somewhat cheekily, as we discuss his company’s work on those creatures for the popular Disney+ series. Backman is the Toronto-based VFX supervisor for Pixomondo, one of the visual effects studios that Disney, Lucasfilm, and Industrial Light & Magic leaned on to help flesh out the fantasy worlds of The Mandalorian. His studio was responsible for the design work behind several of the series' memorable creatures, including the dewbacks, the flying beast and "space goat" from episode 7, as well as the blurrgs. Read more...