PT Doug Chiang and Ian McCaig Appreciation Thread

Ralph Mcquarrie is an amazing artist and without him Star Wars wouldn't look as it does now.
He sadly passed away in 2012 but his art will always be a part of Star Wars and make it's way into new projects.(TCW and Rebels for exemple)
Here I want you to show your appreciation for other great artists involved in the making of
Star Wars Episodes I,II and III .
Doug Chiang and Ian McCaig who are in my opinion really underrated.



Discuss.
Edit : I'm glad that some of their concepts made their way into TCW.

 

Was the concept art of Maul created by Chiang or Mccaig? The drawing you posted of Maul its one of my favorites.

They should make an alternative version of the PT just with drawings of both artist, I will buy it! hahaha

I like this one too:

 

Maul's painting is McCaig's .

 

I love the art from these guys. That Naboo starfighter piece is one of my favorite Star Wars concept art pieces ever. I'm glad Chiang and McCaig were brought on to work on The Force Awakens.

 

how i love the ships of the Naboo

 

Here's a few of my favorites:









Chiang had a really great vision for what the pre-Empire world of Star Wars would look like. In some ways I wish they had stayed even more faithful to his art for the final film. I love the look of the bone-white droids and the more sinister look for the Nemoidians.

 

Agreed. And they should have gone with Chiang's overall look for AOTC and ROTS. He's the heir to McQuarrie, in my view.

 

Heir to the Concept art.

 

https://www.google.de/url?sa=t&sour...F19-ZByulGgOySsLg&sig2=-7WtQ0POwfWLZX9au15Heg​

 

Those early Nemoidians looks kind of Geonosian. (Their faces, anyway).

 

The Geonosians are indeed based on early Neimodians.
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Geonosian
Comparison :



http://www.starwars.com/news/back-from-the-drawing-board-recycled-star-wars-aliens

 

Doug Chiang's Slave I art has been my desktop background for years now. I had the opportunity to see the original art at a SW prop/costume museum show in London when CE was on. (Scroll down a bit to see it).

 

they were going to represent that the droids are based on those who created them. they later used that in aotc where the droids look like geonosians who manufacture them.

 

The paintings and designs for TPM are so much better than the ones made for AOTC and ROTS. Geonosians are an example of what a dislike in the movies.

 

that makes no sense. the geonosian design was a part of ep 1 in the battle droids. the aesthetic of 2 and 3 have to be different and more cluttered or it wouldn't transition into the ot. that's the point.

 

Im talking bout the final result. The designs that we see in AOTC and ROTS are inferior than the ones in TPM, like the were lazy, or they changed the mind behind the paintings and drawings (I don`t know who were the responsables for this in AOTC and ROTS). Others examples that I dislike:

- ARC Starfighter;
- AT-TE Walker;
- Jedistarfighter in the beginning of ROTS;
- Republic attack cruiser;

 

did you miss the part where i said they were transitioning into the ot?

- ARC Starfighter; - x-wing
- AT-TE Walker; - at-at
- Jedistarfighter in the beginning of ROTS; - tie fighters
- Republic attack cruiser - star destroyers

 

That and they are really memorable (and great) designs.

 

It doesn't matter if its a transition to the OT. The final result its not good to me.

 

Doug Chiang on the instant appeal of designing Star Wars characters

great interview with doug where he talks about laying down the designs for all three films.

 

I love all those designs and the powerful hints of transition embedded within; though I see Messi's point, or go in a different direction with it, and will say that I think the ship designs in TPM are more full-bodied; more solid.

But that's also sort of the point, isn't it? All the ships we see in the first few minutes of ROTS form a powerful contrast with the space and land vehicles in TPM. Things are more rectilinear, more spindly, more skeletal, more brittle, more decayed in ROTS.

Grievous, the personification and the epitomization of everything just described, is even used as something of a scale mirror to the ARC starfighters locking their s-foils "in attack position" at the start of the film. Lucas visually tops and tails the first half of the movie by visually inverting these moments (ARC starfighters impressively attack left to right; Grievous separates and raises his arms, Praying Mantis-style, from screen-right, about to attack by moving to the left). You can also see a mid-phase point with a cut to Kashyyyk after the opera scene (in which those Dragon Fly-like Wookiee air machines swoop roughly toward the centre of the screen after banking in from the right).

I actually think ROTS has pretty underrated visual design. The scenery of the film, and its attendant colour palettes, has a very industrial, agitated look that gives everything a slightly burned-out, pig-iron feel, with tactfully-muted pastels and burnished browns and golds lending the sense of an ancient, cosmopolitan galaxy reaching the end of an epoch. It's very cleverly done, IMO.

Anyway, nice thread!!! Doug Chiang and Ian McCaig need some artistic love. Those select panels that Han Burgundy posted are gorgeous and definitely make Chiang a spiritual heir to McQuarrie. And yes -- they are that little bit bolder than what made it into the finished film. Perhaps one reason that TPM often seems a bit more rated for its design work is that it is the visually brightest of the films; with a lot of scenes occurring outdoors in strong sunlight. While smoke and shadows can bring wonderful atmosphere to a model or a set, audiences also need to be able to see the design work when the intent is to amaze with the fantastical sense of a quasi-utopic age long past. So the TPM artwork and production design has that on its side.

That, and, TPM is meant to be the Star Wars galaxy as its most removed (in a basic chronologic sense); and a storytelling method was obviously adopted by Lucas with the sense of everything coming at a viewer -- like a pop-up book in the words of Ingram_I -- for the first time; mirroring the sense of awe and overwhelming discombobulation felt by the movie's child wanderers: Amidala, Anakin, and Jar Jar. It can't help but dazzle you a bit, basically.

And I think, if people are totally honest (and yes, yes, I know, this is all subjective, really), the best designed of the original movies is... the original movie/ANH. John Mollo's spartan military costumes particularly impress. And the contrast between that design work and TPM's explosively exotic geisha era is a shock to the senses: a conflagration, a reverie. This is actually one of the best things about Star Wars, IMO: the way things clash and contrast and play off against each other. It's all quite deliberate and highly stimulating. A real acid trip.

 

There's nothing "cluttered" about the OT designs. The ships, etc., all have very simple shapes. Triangles, circles, rectangles, etc.

 

In at least some cases, there's huge qualities of greebles on top of the simple shape though. Star Destroyers. The Millennium Falcon.

 

I love the Senate Guards.




It's impressive how they took a villainous design (the Royal Guards) and turned it into a "good guy" design and I like the resulting dramatic irony.

I also love that the Republic uses a predeccesor of the Imperial crest because of that same dramatic irony:

Much better than the "Jedi robes" that we ended up getting in the prequels. Luke's ROTJ robes make more sense for the Jedi than Tatooine moisture farmer robes.

 

There pretty good artists. Here's some of my favorites.