Imagining Star Wars

The Evolving Role of Concept Artists Through ThreeDecades

The mechanical design training of Lucasfilm concept artist RyanChurch is especially evident in this drawing for Star Wars: EpisodeII- Attack of the Clones. (Click image for a larger view)

It was a chilly spring night in San Francisco, but the weatherdidn't deter the crowd queuing outside the Academy of Art College. Theywere waiting to see honorary doctorates bestowed upon two artists whohelped define the look of the Star Wars universe — RalphMcQuarrie and Douglas Chiang. Many in the crowd weren't even alive in1975 when McQuarrie first drew R2-D2 and Darth Vader, but theirstanding ovation spoke volumes about the enduring impact of hisdesigns. Of course, it didn't hurt that the Academy had arranged toscreen the awards scene in Star Wars where Princess Leia honorsLuke Skywalker and Han Solo. The clip prompted cheers from the crowd,underscoring the celebratory mood.

Presented as part of the college's Legends of Film Graphics series,the program included Star Wars concept art and comments fromMcQuarrie and Chiang. Their perspectives on designing environments,characters, and costumes for the Lucas franchise were a study in howtheir craft has evolved from pen and paper to digital tools. For thefirst movie, Star Wars: Episode IV-A New Hope, McQuarrie had todesign characters like the robot C-3PO and the wookie Chewbacca so theycould be inhabited by actors. By the time Doug Chiang was creating artfor 1999's Star Wars: Episode I-The Phantom Menace, IndustrialLight + Magic's computer animation expertise enabled him to designunderwater worlds and armies of 10,000 droids.

“I understand my pictures did something to convince Fox tomake a Star Wars movie,” McQuarrie said modestly. Herecalled how he was a freelance artist working out of his garage whenGeorge Lucas dropped off a script for a space fantasy. McQuarriepreviously drew technical illustrations for Boeing and graphics forCBS-TV coverage of lunar landings. But his first drawing for Lucas wasall about personality — he gave shape to the robots R2-D2 andC-3PO. “I made the painting in about two days,” herecalled. Images of Darth Vader, sandcrawlers, and the Death Star soonfollowed, providing the designs that sealed the deal.

A Chiang-designed action sequence in Episode I that would berealized by ILM completely in the virtual realm. (Click image for a larger view)

While Lucas filmed Star Wars in England, McQuarrie painted inSouthern California. He created some matte paintings, some of whichwere 6ft. long. He'd strap them onto the roof of his car and drive towhere Lucas' fledgling visual effects team could photograph them.Although the modern effects era was just coming of age, artists likeMcQuarrie soon learned to accommodate their designs to the requirementsof techniques like motion control photography.

One case in point was the ominous orb Lucas called the Death Star.“George wanted it to be spherical,” said McQuarrie.“My first thought was ‘a sphere?’ That's acomfortable, approachable shape, like an egg. It isn't reallythreatening. In my early drawings the sphere was a lot smaller, but[effects supervisor] John Dykstra said, ‘For our horizon toappear flat, like the earth, it's got to be really big.’ So wemade this 3 1/2ft. diameter Plexiglas sphere, and I decorated it withtape and layers of paper glued onto it. We put a light inside, and Icut little holes to let light shine through. That made a veryconvincing Death Star.”

Heroes make their escape in this dynamic painting by RalphMcQuarrie. (Click image for a larger view)

The early days of Star Wars design had a “boys buildingmodel planes” quality about it, and job descriptions wereflexible. But the aesthetic direction Lucas established back thencontinues to this day — he still envisions the Star Warsuniverse as a lived-in place. “George insisted on rust and dents,to convince people that these things were actually there, “saidMcQuarrie. “Most people envisioned the future to be allairbrushed and smooth, but that's unreal. We weren't trying to create‘the future.’ This was just another galaxy, far, faraway.”

McQuarrie's Boeing background helped him design plausible spaceshipsand vehicles. “I think in 3D, and I can pretty much draw whateverI can imagine. I'd listened to engineers talk about projects, and thenmade drawings that reflected their ideas.” For Star Wars,and later for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of theJedi, McQuarrie followed a similar method. “I would step intoa scene in my mind and walk through it, picking angles on things. I'dmake thumbnail sketches showing the basic composition of a shot. ThenI'd make a larger pencil drawing and blow that up to the size I wasgoing to paint.” Explaining his design process to the Academyaudience, McQuarrie provoked laughter when he recalled doing onepainting from a particularly extreme perspective, and getting chided byLucas. He recalled the director saying, “I'll pick the cameraangles, Ralph!”

Lucas was clear about his preferences, marking concept art with oneof three stamps: “OK,” “Not OK,” and

“Wonderful.” He did approve (though McQuarrie remembersLucas was reluctant) the designer's idea of giving Darth Vader hisinfamous breathing mask. “George wanted a helmet like a Japanesewarrior. But I was afraid Darth would die in the vacuum of space whenhe jumped from one ship to another, so he should have amask.”

Ryan Church’s conception of anair assault in Episode II: Attack of the Clones.

Despite the primitive effects technology available when StarWars began, McQuarrie said Lucas' approach was always, 'Make whatyou think is ideal and don't worry how we're going to make it work.' SoI tended to concentrate on how things looked. It didn't always turn outlike I wanted!” One example was McQuarrie's idea for R2-D2— initially envisioned as a capsule-like robot that rolledgyroscopically. While that would have been clearly unwieldy usingmid-1970's mechanics, such a robot could easily be realisticallyanimated today in CG.

And CG became the means by which R2-D2 scooted around in the StarWars prequel episodes — 1999's The Phantom Menace and2002's Attack of the Clones. ILM's capacity to animate photorealCG has meant that McQuarrie's robots and even famous puppet characterslike Yoda could perform unprecedented feats. That opened up thefloodgates for the second generation of Star Wars conceptartists.

A concept painting by Ryan Church depicting a climactic battlein Attack of the Clones. (Click image for a larger view)

Prominent among them was Doug Chiang, who began his remarks to theAcademy audience by acknowledging, “I'm riding on RalphMcQuarrie's coattails. I started in this business because of hiswork.” Educated in both film and industrial design, Chiang workedat ILM on projects like Terminator 2, Forrest Gump, and DeathBecomes Her, which earned him an Oscar. In 1995, Lucasfilm tappedChiang as director of concept design for The Phantom Menace.(Lucas also tried to lure back McQuarrie, who had expanded hisreputation with designs for E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, andOscar-winning contributions to Cocoon. But as McQuarrieadmitted, “I was kind of ‘Star-Warred’ out.Besides, Doug had a ton of drawings and paintings that were knockouts,so I told George I didn't think I'd have anything to add.”)

Chiang's tenure in the Star Wars milieu marked a transitionaltime in the evolution of concept art, as the design process was movinginexorably into the digital realm. Although skilled on computers,Chiang admitted, “I still prefer the feeling of the grit ofpaper. There's a direct connection with a piece of art. But becausefilm schedules are so tight, the computer is almost a dream tool. Youcan shorten the time it takes to design something by a factor of two,if not more. But the inherent danger with powerful tools is that youcan hide poor design with lots of glitz.“

Ryan Church brings a unique architectural eye to the look of thespeaker’s platform.

Given the rapid expansion of digital pipelines at both Lucasfilm andILM during the 1990s, Chiang's hand-drawn work was quickly scanned intocomputers. Color, lighting, and textures were added, and the designsmoved on to other collaborators, including the sculptors who built 3Dmaquettes. Once a piece of art is digital, Chiang explained, “Itcan be cut into a sequence or mapped onto 3D geometry to actuallyconstruct a scene. It enables you to approximate a more finished look.Ultimately, these tools are making it easier for the whole design of afilm to happen in one department. That's something that wasn't readilyavailable a few years ago.”

The creative implications of this, Chiang noted, “are veryliberating.” Having worked at ILM, the designer was aware thatpreviously impossible ideas could now be attempted. Chiang recalledLucas telling him the same thing he told McQuarrie, 'Don't worry abouthow we're going to do it. Just design something that works for thestory.' “For a designer, that opens up everything. But becausedesigners like parameters to work within, that's alsofrightening,” said Chiang. “It can be difficult when thepossibilities are too great.”

Chiang based his sleek spaceships in Episode I on modernmilitary aircraft. (Click image for a largerview)

High on Chiang's wish list of possibilities was the massive army ofbattle droids in The Phantom Menace. Unlike McQuarrie, Chiang,“didn't have to worry about puppets or men in suits,” hesays. “In fact, we actually tried to design our droid so that itwas virtually impossible to get a person in there! But we didn't wantto make things so outrageous that they weren't anchored in any kind ofreality. Because if audiences start disbelieving, it takes them out ofthe film experience.”

The artistic team behind Episodes I and II, Chiangnoted, “fortunately understood the fundamentals of anatomy andindustrial design.” Chiang, who based his design for QueenAmidala's sleek spaceship on the U.S. military's stealth bomber,emphasized, “You have to imbue objects with a real world sense.When people see something, they have to be able to understand quicklywhat it can do. That's important for Star Wars films, which arealready one step removed from reality.”

Ryan Church’s exotic-looking vehicles for Episode IIreflect his training in industrial design. (Click image for a larger view)

Which is not to say Chiang's team held back, particularly with thepod race in The Phantom Menace, which was designed to be almosttotally virtual. “We wondered if we could really do that,”he recalled. “I remember showing some work to John Knoll, one ofILM's visual effects supervisors, and his jaw dropped. But he didn'tsay, ‘We can't do it,’ It was more like ‘Wow, I don'tknow how we're going to do it, but we're going totry.’”

It was actually Lucas who put the brakes on one of the moreambitious concepts for Episode I. ILM's animators were itchingto digitally animate Yoda. “We probably could have brought a lotmore life to the character with the tools we had,” said Chiang.“But George wanted to hold back a bit. He said, ‘It needsto look like the Yoda we know.’” Lucas would wait untilEpisode II to create a scene where a digital Yoda kicksbutt.

In addition to Yoda, reprising the Jedi light sabers and thefamiliar desert planet of Tatooine helped tie Episodes I andII into the Star Wars tradition. For Episode II,Chiang even designed a clone army that would presage the white-armoredStormtroopers that McQuarrie designed for what eventually will beconsidered Episode IV, the original Star Wars.

Doug Chiang's concept of an underwater CG monster in The PhantomMenace. (Click image for a larger view)

But Lucas also wanted to depict several additional, exoticenvironments in his prequels. Increasingly, he was filming actorsagainst bluescreen and showing concept art to his cast and crew so theywould get a sense of the final shots he had in mind.

On the art of designing virtual sets, Chiang remarked, “InEpisode I we were still tapping the boundaries of what waspossible. We had partial practical sets enhanced with virtual sets. ForEpisode II we knew that a lot of the sets couldn't be built,just because of the quality of the material. On the water planet ofKamino, for instance, there were vast cloning rooms where we needed aluminous light quality coming out of the walls. That would have beenvery difficult to achieve with practical materials, so we knew from thebeginning that there would have to be some kind of a digitalbackground. Certain scenes were almost test cases for how far we couldpush virtual backgrounds with bluescreen actors.”

The need to invent sets, and even complete environments, meant thatChiang had to have detailed drawings of everything — fromdoorknobs to the overall look. “If we had time, we would actuallybuild specific elements,” said Chiang. “For example, withcomplex forms like robots, it was necessary to go from drawings to 3Dmaquettes to work out all the joints. You can ‘cheat’ in 2Dand sometimes draw something that can't be built. In the 3D worldthere's very little cheating. We sometimes even modeled something in3D-CG to interpret what a physical model might look like in the virtualworld. All that information was passed to the next department, whetherthat was ILM or another group. It was our job to provide everyone withthe most up-to-date, accurate information — all the materialreferences, the geometry references — everything that wasnecessary to complete a shot.”

As the concept artist's job description expanded, so did the team.They needed, as one Lucasfilm executive reportedly put it, “RalphMcQuarrie types.” Fitting the bill were Ryan Church and ErikTiemens from ILM. The pair would eventually rise to the position ofconcept design supervisors for Episode III, with Chiang movingon to The Polar Express.

Virtual sets were abundant in Episode II, including thiscoliseum designed by Ryan Church. (Click image for a larger view)

But when Church and Tiemens first arrived during Episode II,Church recalls, “We were there to provide keyframe productionillustrations that would link Doug Chiang's concept work and the finalimages that ILM's matte painters and effects crew were creating. Wewere previsualizing lighting, mood, and color schemes.”

The idea of previsualizing an entire film — creating ananimatic, or “moving blueprint” — has increasinglycharacterized Lucas' approach. That's become especially crucial as theamount of virtual material continues to rise. As Church observes,“There are lots of exotic places that have no directcorrespondence to our own world.”

The conceptual process still begins, however, with the hand of anartist like Church, although he wields a computer stylus and not abrush or pen. Church uses the program Painter to emulate oil, acrylic,gouache, or watercolor paintings. “We're lucky enough to be inthe first generation where computers are fast enough and software iscomprehensive enough to do that,” he says.

Trained in industrial design, Church operates under the samedirectives that Star Wars artists always have — to designthings that look like they could actually exist. “We've had todesign cultures and objects that are supposed to look like they've beenaround for thousands of years and have had a natural evolutionaryprocess. And they have to look right for their environments. Of course,we couldn't have just one iconic form language. George wanted five orsix of them.”

When Lucas reviews concept art, he still uses stamps like he didwith McQuarrie. But now he uses just two: ‘OK’ and‘Fabuloso.’ Church explains, “If something isunstamped, it means ‘I don't want to see that again.’ Itcould be a great design, but it doesn't belong in the Star Warsuniverse.”

The approved concept art then moves on to sculptors who build actualmodels, and to Lucasfilm's animatics department. The latter, Churchexplains, “get our paintings into 3D moving space. Thosepaintings fill in the backgrounds and the animatics guys build offthem. George wanted our talents to be put towards making aself-contained ‘document’ that would be as faithful to thefinal movie as possible. Hundreds of detailed animatic shots getcreated. This infrastructure has risen with the advent of thesedigitally heavy films.”

The digital infrastructure has also given Lucas himself anincreasingly powerful way to communicate with everyone from setbuilders to CG modelers. On Episode III, which Church and hisfellow artists spent a year designing, the animatics reflected a higherdegree of finish than had ever been achieved before. “This is thefirst show where we've been able to really implement this volume ofwork,” notes Church. “We basically got the entire thingmapped out in complete color and design. It will change as things getmore photorealistically resolved, of course. But the actors, and the DPas he lights a scene, can literally see what George wants a shot tolook like. They're no longer looking at black-and-white sketches or oneor two key production images. It gets everyone on the samepage.”

Once Lucas began shooting Episode III in the summer of 2003,the responsibilities of Church and Tiemans shifted. They became morelike art directors, overseeing the translation of ideas by the visualeffects and animation teams. By the time the rough cut animaticsarrived at ILM, Church asserts, “The idea was that there shouldbe no question about what something was supposed to look like. Thepeople at ILM have enough to worry about in executing the photorealshots, so anytime we can take pressure off their hands they reallyappreciate it.”

They can't be too prepared, either. Back on Episode II, forexample, Church and Tiemans had to work out an airborne chase ofspeeder cars above the neon metropolis of Coruscant, which Doug Chiangdesigned as a cross between Tokyo's Ginza district and Las Vegas. Bythe time the ILM crew undertook the filming of the sequence, they knewthey'd need a model of the city that was 50ft. long.

While there has been a clear creative through-line from McQuarrie toChiang to Church, there is something underway now that hasn't happenedbefore. Episode III, due in 2005, will bring the StarWars epic full circle. The “age of exploration”depicted in The Phantom Menace and Attack of The Clonesnow moves toward the rise of Darth Vader and the galaxy-wide conflictof the original Star Wars.

Ralph McQuarrie, whose art helped start it all, is as curious asanyone to see if George can set up Star Wars. “After all,that film was about a terrible rebel war,” said McQuarrie. ButMcQuarrie is certain about one thing: He's astonished by the lastingimpact of his designs. “I still get letters from people who tellme that they saw my work when they were kids and it inspired them tobecome artists. That's the most amazing thing of all.”