Do you think your illustrations were translated well into the 3D graphics of the movie?
Yeah, I think so—ILM did a really cool job of translating our drawings. I think once George approves something, it’s very difficult to get it changed. On most films, when you do designs, it goes through so many people before it makes it down to the actual 3D modeler or whoever’s building the set. On Star Wars, George’s word is pretty much final. So if he approves something, that’s it—that’s the one that goes into the movies.
Can you identify particular things in Episode III that you designed?
A ton of the volcano stuff at the end of the movie, I did a lot of the sets for that. You’ve probably seen the trailer—it’s where they fight and they jump on railings. That’s a very big set I worked a lot on. I did a lot of the detail drawings for Grievous; my friend Warren Fu actually designed him, but the thing is, after we design it, we have to make it work for animation. He’s a very complex droid, so it’s a pain making it work. That was a really hard time; I spent about a month just getting around the joints, and his arms and legs. You can see in the trailer, too, that they have a little bit of human movement to them. So I came up with some joints that should be pretty cool in the film—especially the bodyguards, and how their waists work; it’s not a traditional cylindrical, XYZ thing. And they translated that exactly into the film.
Did you actually study robot/mechanical design when drawing these, or did you just use your imagination?
It’s probably half and half. The cool thing about working at the Ranch is that I think George has the biggest library on the planet. He has a warehouse that archives every single book you can imagine. So what we do is write notes on what we want to see: “I want to look at Roman architecture.” And we send the note down to the library, and they find every single book we need—a stack of books, so we don’t have to go out and do our own research. We lay them out and we’ll have books all around us. It’s pretty cool.
Did you ever pay attention to the criticisms of the more zealous Star Wars fans about the film's look?
No, you can’t. Until you make a multi-billion-dollar company and make your own movies and fund them yourself, don’t make a comment. The people who make the most comments are the ones who haven’t done anything—they’re sitting at home wishing they could work on these films. I mean, if George went to their house and asked them if they wanted to work on his movie, they’d say “Hell yeah!” But then they’re the most critical of his films. Making a film is really difficult—even just trying to write a script would take you a year to do. I don’t think a lot of people realize it.
What kinds of things did people ask you or Lucasfilm to do?
I get these emails with the weirdest requests, like “Put LCDs in,” or “Don’t call them droids unless they have legs.” Legally, when we’re on the project, we’re not supposed to look at anything because I think people sue George every single day: “We made Star Wars!” So to protect him, we’re not actually allowed to look at portfolios unless they sign away their rights. It’s not because we want to copy them, it’s because we want to stay protected.
There are a lot of weird people who send the strangest proposals to the Ranch. You can never imagine: People sending us shoes painted white, saying they can make Stormtrooper shoes for us; a guy sending us a whole coffin with his portfolio dug inside it; Stormtroopers made out of pipes. I think a lot of people don’t realize what true production is, they just think they can somehow make a Stormtrooper toy and work on the movie. It’s completely different. It’s only here on the west coast or east coast where production really happens—it’s a very focused, small industry of people.
But the fans, they’re crazy. Those TheForce.net guys—they’re good. I think they’ve got guys inside who tell them what happens. They had the partial story very, very early on—back when only ILM and a few people knew what the story was. It’s pretty scary!
