The Toronto Sun has a new article on the amazing Yoda sequence:

Lucas collaborated with the late Muppet man Jim Henson in England. Henson introduced him to Frank Oz.

"We worked on it and we struggled and we were terrified that we weren't going to be able to pull this thing off -- because he was a key character and ultimately he was a Muppet!"

Eventually, they came up with Yoda, a puppet manipulated by and voiced by Oz. Today, you still hear Oz's voice.

But the puppet has been replaced by digital effects, with build-in imperfections to ensure that the spirit and precise folksy look of Yoda was maintained digitally -- including the ear-wiggle that Oz's puppet had when he spoke.

What Lucas could shed was Yoda's restrictions, his two-foot range of movement, his from-the-waist-up close-ups, the need to shoot forced long-shot perspectives of midgets dressed as Yoda.

Lucas had tried to do Yoda digitally in The Phantom Menace but he and his team could not get it right. This time, led by returning ILM animator director Rob Coleman (a Canadian from Toronto), the team found a hi-tech way.