in Return of the Jedi evolved during the concept, creation, and filming processes. Early concept sketches portrayed a creature with several moving tentacles and a pronounced beak; but Star Wars creator George Lucas, did not have the technology or financial resources to realize this concept in the 1983 film. Special effects artists Stuart Freeborn, Phil Tippett, and the crew of Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) constructed a pit in the desert sands of Yuma, Arizona, that contained a gaping mouth with jagged teeth and tentacles. At the time, the pit (with Jabba the Hutt's sail barge) constituted one of the largest motion picture sets ever constructed. A hydraulic system was designed to animate the creature, but the blowing sand clogged the mechanism. The film crew instead used poles and wires to move the creature's tentacles. Lucas was not satisfied with the effect, complaining, "There was nothing alive about the whole thing." Working on the giant set was an arduous task, according to the crew members involved. Tippett told Starlog magazine, "We were working the creature at the bottom of a gorge, so we got no breeze. Sand constantly fell down upon us". In addition to operating the sarlacc, many technicians were standing in as skiff guards in full wardrobe. Tippett remarks, "[We] were covered with [sand and] glue from the costumes. I almost cracked on that one. I think I cried, it was so terrible." Actress Carrie Fisher recalled that many of the crew and stuntmen who fell into the creature during filming suffered broken legs and sprained ankles. ILM crew members received some satisfaction when they dismantled the set at the conclusion of filming and sold it to Mexico as scrap. The one condition of the sale was that the materials were not to be resold as souvenirs. The sarlacc design underwent a series of changes when Lucas released the Special Edition of Return of the Jedi in 1997. Employing the new technology of computer-generated imagery (CGI), ILM amended the creature's appearance with the addition of CGI tentacles and a beak inside the sarlacc's mouth. According to Lucas, it "just looks much more realistic and more threatening ... it helps the scene considerably." Subsequent depictions of the sarlacc in Star Wars fiction are based on this revised design. Some of the special effects from the 1983 film were retained in the Special Edition. The tentacle that captures the skiff