In 2002, Feng Zhu got the call every conceptual artist in Hollywood wants to hear: An invitation to join George Lucas at Skywalker Ranch in Northern California. What’s more, he’d be helping design the look of the final Star Wars chapter, Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. This was a new highpoint in Feng’s career as a concept illustrator, which began nine years ago with his work on an ill-fated online version of Wing Commander at Electronic Arts; he later got much attention as the designer of the shapely video game vamp BloodRayne. Since then, he’s also worked with director James Cameron on a new film project, helped produce a line of industrial art design DVDs at Gnomon Workshop, and is starting up a new design firm, Gamma Ray Studios. In video games, he’s been working on the long-long-long-awaited Duke Nukem Forever at 3D Realms, and a couple of Unreal projects for Epic. He’s also currently designing some toys he hopes to unveil at the next Comic-Con, as well as posters and new DVDs. In this interview, he talks about the job of creating conceptual art, the visual style of Episode III, and what it’s like to work for Jedi master George Lucas.

How did you land one of the biggest film jobs in conceptual design: Revenge of the Sith?

I have a friend who works at Skywalker Ranch—he’s actually the art director for Star Wars, Ryan Church—and he said they were looking for artists for Episode III. And I was like, “Hey, I’m sending my stuff!” So then they hired me on. For concept design, that’s probably the film you want to work on because everything needs to be designed in this movie. It’s all original stuff. It was a lot of fun working on this film. I grew up with all these movies, and to work on the last one is especially fun.

Did you have any early trepidation taking on such a huge icon?

Yeah, the first few days were pretty scary because we had meetings with George every Friday, so of course the days building up to that… I had worked freelance for them for about a month from Los Angeles, sending them my stuff, and George would look at it, but I never met him in person. Then I finally went to the Ranch to work full time, and the first few days before that meeting I was pretty nervous—George Lucas was going to walk in, look at my drawings, and make comments about them! But it went well. He’s a nice guy.

What was the experience of working at Skywalker Ranch like?

Basically, he comes in on Fridays, looks at our drawings, and picks the ones he likes. He also gives us story points or anything he needs on that day. So then we take the weekend off and on Monday we have our little team meetings and divide up who is working on what. My main assignment there was environments, and anything man-made—droids, vehicles, stuff like that. There’s another team that handles the characters and creatures. So we divide the work up and everyone works really hard and then on Friday we have the big meeting.

Did Lucas ever give you personal advice on particular pieces?

Yeah, I worked on a couple of things that he came up with the original designs for. Like Grievous, for example, has these bodyguards hanging around with him that have these weapons, and George was the one who goes, “I want it to look like that.” And he had it sketched out on a little pad for me. I think I did a couple of versions that were too crazy. He’d go, “Nooo, I don’t want that, I just want this.” And then he’d just draw it on paper and give it to me. So if you’re designing something directly, he’ll talk to you one on one about what he needs. So it was pretty cool.

What was the overall style you were shooting for in Episode III?

Well, I can’t talk about too much of it because it’s not out, but there’s definitely a new visual that George always wanted to push us (toward), especially when we first got onto the project. He wanted a visual that no one had seen before—it’s not in any other movie. He pushes really hard on that. I did a lot of planets that would get rejected: “Oh, this looks like Aliens,” or “This looks like Blade Runner,” things like that. He wants something that looks very different. But then other parts of the movie needed to look more like the original Star Wars because this movie is bridging the gap, so we did introduce a couple of designs in there that are merging the two together. There’s a 20-year gap between this movie and the last one, I believe, so we couldn’t bridge it that far—we couldn’t have the original X-Wing.

How has the look of the prequels evolved from Episode I to Episode III?

I think George’s whole goal was that Episodes I and II were like a pre-World War II era, where everyone is well-off and everything is well-made and crafted. And Episode III is where things go to war, basically. The later Star Wars are when the war is over and no one has money and the spaceships are pretty crappy looking. So he wanted to create this contrast, and I think he did that with Episodes I and II—everything looks very fresh. And when you see Episode III, it’s going to feel a lot darker as a result, because this is the turning point for all the films.