Terryl Whitlatch

Terryl Whitlatch's fascination with animals and drawing started early. Countless weekends were spent visiting zoos, aquariums, and museums with her artist mother and biologist father. Her formal education was in the sciences, rather than art — vertebrate zoology, to be specific — but after studying illustration, Whitlatch began a career that has spanned 25 years. She has worked with many major studios and effects houses as a highly sought-after creature and concept designer. Clients include Industrial Light & Magic, Lucasfilm Ltd., Pixar, Walt Disney Feature Animation, PDI, Entertainment Arts, LucasArts, Chronicle Books, and various zoos and natural history museums.

Whitlatch has acted as principal creature designer for Star Wars: The Phantom Menace and designed most of the alien characters and creatures, from concept to fully realized anatomies and stylizations. Some of her significant characters include Jar-Jar Binx, Sebulba, the Podracers, the undersea monsters of Naboo, and the Naboo Swamp creatures. She also worked closely with George Lucas in the redesign of characters such as Jabba the Hutt and the Dewbacks.

For Disney Feature Animation's Brother Bear, she designed bear, moose, and other animal characters, from highly realistic anatomical studies to fully branded characters. She has contributed concept work to feature films including John Carter of Mars, DragonHeart, Men in Black, Jumanji, and Pixar's Brave. She is also the creator and illustrator of five books: The Wildlife of Star Wars: A Field Guide, The Katurran Odyssey, Animals Real and Imagined, Science of Creature Design, and Principles of Creature Design. She has also contributed illustrations to Lucasfilm's The Jedi Path and Book of Sith.