Doug Chiang, Design Director: Quite a lot. The majority of the research that we do when creating a design is to study the world around us. There are ideas everywhere, if you know what to look for and where. The inspirations can be as simple as a rusty door hinge or as obscure as dust mites. We always try to base our designs in reality to give them strong foundations. One of the dangers of designing alternate universes is creating something too fanciful and without a basis in reality. These designs often "date" very quickly.
Doug Chiang served as the Design Director for Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, and one of three Concept Design Supervisors for Star Wars: Episode II Attack of the Clones. He studied film at UCLA before becoming a Clio Award-winning commercial director and designer. In 1989, Chiang became a Visual Effects Art Director at ILM where he worked on such films as Terminator 2, Death Becomes Her, Forrest Gump, Back to the Future II and The Doors. As a director of independent films, Chiang has won many regional and national awards and his paintings are exhibited nationally in a variety of publications.
