Crafts and Creatures: My Favorite Critters From A Galaxy Far, Far Away

Giant purple space whales. Electrical wire-consuming worms. Adorable chubby puffins. The Star Wars galaxy is full of odd creatures, and in this post I picked out some of my favorites to write about. I love how the inventors of these animals gave them more information than just a name, and made them unique from other fictional or real animals, even if some do have similarities. I found a few interesting facts to share about each creature, and also made two crafts to show you: a sock purrgil, and a Loth-Cat or porg face.

Loth-Cats and Tookas

I’ve had a hard time choosing between porgs and Loth-Cats for my favorite Star Wars creatures, but I think I like Loth-Cats a little better. The way they can go from sweet and innocent one moment to attacking Stormtroopers (or padawans) the next makes me laugh. I prefer the Lothal division of the tooka family, because of their colors and ear style. They’re just so cute! I love whenever they interact with Ezra; most animals have a connection to him, but it seems especially strong with these felines of his homeworld.

• Tookas are good for controlling pests, and many freighter captions keep them on their ships for that reason.
• The name “tooka” came from the name of Dave Filoni’s cat, Tuuk.

Porgs

I know some people complain that porgs were made mostly so Disney could sell them as toys, but I can’t complain that they made them so cute. Not every Star Wars creature needs to be as ugly as a kowakian monkey lizard. I remember wanting to know as much as I could about them as soon as we got our first look at one, and trying to figure out how this little penguin-looking bird was going to fly. Hopefully, Chewie doesn’t mind having them as roommates on the Falcon, because I’d love to still see a few hanging around in Episode IX.

• Baby porgs are called “porglets”.
• Their squawks are a combination of the calls of doves, chickens, and turkeys.
• The idea for them came from the Atlantic puffins that live on Skellig Michael Island, where many scenes from The Last Jedi were filmed.

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Porg and Loth-Cat Face Craft

Materials: 

• Brown fabric
• A needle and thread
• Scissors
• A pencil
• Fluff (polyfill or fiberfill stuffing works great)
• Paint and paintbrush

Directions:

1. Take the fabric you are using for the face, and fold it so it overlaps one time. Trace an outline of a Loth-Cat head or a porg face with the pencil.

2. Cut out the head shape.

3.  Taking the two pieces that make up the head, place them on top of each other and sew them together, leaving an inch-long hole.

4. Stuff your craft, and sew the hole closed.

5. Paint the other details on.

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Loth-Wolves

Until the last few episodes of Star Wars Rebels, I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the giant Loth-Wolves. They didn’t seem to be evil, but they were pretty unpredictable and mysterious. We still don’t know a ton about them, or their ability to travel distances through sparkling Force tunnels. But they’re wolves, and wolves are really cool animals no matter what form they’re in. Without them, Ezra and the rest of the crew wouldn’t have realized they needed to go to the Jedi temple to stop all the awful things happening there. After the Empire is removed from Lothal, they began to become more common, when they had been previously thought extinct. To me, this symbolizes how those willing to take a stand against the Empire were few at the beginning of Rebels, but had become a fully-fledged Rebellion by the end. It’s also similar to how all the Jedi were wiped out, but came back against all odds, even if it was only for a short time.

• Loth-wolves were a concern to many of Lothal’s early settlers. They often carried a blaster to protect themselves from them. (Ok, but who would really try to shoot a Loth-Wolf? Except for stormtroopers.)

Convorees

Yet another extremely mysterious animal is this space-owl. They’re always randomly appearing, seemingly watching over certain people, like Moria with Ahsoka. We didn’t get a clear answer about if Moria was really a manifestation of the Daughter, or just performing her will, as DUME did for Kanan. I love the colors of the convorees, especially Moria’s. They’re almost like a monkey mixed with an owl, because of their grabbing tails.

• Convorees can be as small as 8 inches.
• Kiros Birds are very similar creatures to the convorees, the difference being that they are blue and purple, while convorees are gold and brown.

Varactyls

I didn’t really notice how neat these animals were until I was watching an episode of The Freemaker Adventures where the team had to attempt to retrieve something special from a group of them. I think the animation really brought out their colors. While most of the other creatures in this list are super mysterious or unfriendly, varactyls are extremely loyal and obedient mounts. They’re a cool mix of a bird and a lizard, as close as we’ll probably get to a living, breathing dragon in Star Wars. (Krayt Dragons do exist, but I don’t think anyone’s ever seen one, and they don’t sound friendly.) I also love the sounds they make, they remind me of raptor calls.

• Their curved claws and long tails help them balance, to the point where they can even travel upside down on Utapau’s rocky surface

Purrgil

Purrgil were not really on the list of my favorite beasts until they helped free Lothal, but I still loved their colors from the beginning. The fact that the inventors of the hyperdrive got the inspiration from them is really neat. It’s sad how many of these amazing creatures are killed by pilots on sight because of all the trouble they unintentionally cause to hyperspace users. They’re just big, sweet, space whales.

• A group of purrgil is called a flock and is led by a leader called the purrgil king.

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Sock Purrgil

(I was going to do sock ysalamiri, but as I was looking at my socks to figure out how it was going to work, I realized that they actually look a lot more like purrgil.)

Materials:

• 2 white socks
• Fabric or acrylic paint in various colors, and a paintbrush (my paint was a few different shades of purple and pink, as well as yellow)
• A needle and thread (I’m using blue thread, at least for the eyes)
• Two buttons (these are for the eyes, so I’m using blue again)
• Scissors
• Stuffing  (again, fiberfill or polyfill is a great choice)

1. Laying the sock flat, cut the ankle part into 4 strips about 6 inches long. Trim the sides until they’re the width you want them to be. If your sock isn’t long enough to cut 6 inch tentacles, you may have to cut some extra fabric from the other sock to sew onto the ends of each strip.

2. Paint both sides of the sock. If you’re using acrylic paint, I mix mine with water so it’s not so thick. Then let it dry completely.

3. Sew the buttons onto the head. I found it helpful to roll up the rest of the sock towards the closed-off end until I could see what I was doing.

4. Stuff the purrgil with fluff, trying to pack as much in as possible.

5. Bunch the end together, and sew it closed. Try not to loop the thread over a tentacle part, otherwise when you pull it tight it will bunch up and make it look funny. (This was definitely not something I did and then had to take out…)

Ta da!

I named mine Blueberry, in honor of our lost Blueberry.

I still think the tentacles look a little funny, but making them thicker would require more sewing. 🙂

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Honorable mentions to this list of fantastic creatures are vulptices, blurrgs, ackleys, and fathiers.

All of these pictures were either from StarWars.com, or were taken by the author of this article.

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This article was written by Audrey L., Staff Blogger for The Elven Padawan, and first appeared on ElvenPadawan.com

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What is your favorite fantastical creature? Do you like Loth-Cats or Porgs better? Have you ever made any cool crafts based on your favorite fictional critter? (if you have pictures you’d like to share, shoot them our way on Twitter! Our handle is @ElvenPadawan; we’d love to see and share your work!)