Concept Designer Doug Chiang
Talks Technology at WonderCon 2005

By Kat
Staff Writer

February 22, 2005

SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Doug Chiang was the Design Director for Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and a Concept Design Supervisor for Episode II: Attack of the Clones. He appeared at WonderCon 2005 as a panelist during a Question and Answer session for the upcoming movie War of the Worlds, directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise.

Chiang, a concept designer for the film, answered questions from fans about War of the Worlds and his job in general. One fan asked about Chiang's experience working with different directors and different styles. Chiang referred to his experience working with George Lucas. He said that Lucas has a lot of different ideas that he broadly envisions in his mind. The job of the imaging team, Chiang said, is to somehow capture these ideas on paper. The designers were given a lot of freedom on The Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones and could play around with different projects, although Lucas had to give final approval.

Chiang said directors like Spielberg and Lucas often ask him to, "Show me something that we haven't seen before." Chiang loves his job, but he admitted that tasks can be very difficult and that spaceships in particular can be a challenge for him to draw. Futuristic technology is harder to draw, he said, because it must seem plausible and real to the audience. Sometimes someone will ask him or one of the other designers to make something look more "real". There's no easy way, he said, to make a futuristic design look more "real"--it's just back to the drawing board.

Concept Designer Doug Chiang Talks Technology at WonderCon 2005

Concept Designer Doug Chiang
Talks Technology at WonderCon 2005