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Watch your crown, Baby Yoda; you’re about to have some co*petition for most adorable puppet-creature in town. Enter Baby Ochi, the elusive and extremely cute magical critter from A24’s forthco*ing fantasy adventure, The Legend Of Ochi. In the film—the feature-length debut from music video director Isaiah Saxon—a young girl named Yuri grows up in a fictional society that has taught her to fear the creatures all her life. That’s until she finds a wounded baby ochi all by himself, and learns that things aren’t always as they seem. 

In contrast, the ochi—and the world around both him and Yuri—are almost exactly as they seem. More specifically, they were rendered using a mixture of practical and digital effects; no tennis ball sidekicks here. The ochi specifically was brought to life by five skilled puppeteers, as illustrated in a first look clip shared by A24 today. “You could see all five puppeteers standing around in plainclothes, and if you looked at the puppet, you were like, ‘That’s a real living thing,'” Saxon says in the video, which shows multiple iterations of the puppet’s fabrication. 

While it appears that some blue screens were used, Saxon was clearly motivated by a desire to go back to a prior era of Amblin-esque filmmaking. “Growing up, I felt that the deepest mysteries were found in nature,” he said. “I hope to share that same feeling that anything is possible.”

The Legend Of Ochi stars Helena Zengel, Finn Wolfhard, Emily Watson, and Willem Dafoe. It originally premiered at Sundance, but will release in theaters on April 25. Check out the trailer below: