JAK Films' Art Department is where the Star Wars magic, after it has jumped out of George Lucas' imagination, first starts to operate. In the pre-production phase of a Star Wars movie, the Art Department is buzzing with creative activity, and is peopled by the family that Design Director Doug Chiang has assembled to bring to life the scripts of the new Star Wars trilogy. This is where the exotic creatures take their first breath and the amazing vehicles and starships speed into reality, moving from concept sketch to model or sculpture, oftentimes even prematurely jumping to the screen in the form of animatics. The Art Department is the beating heart of the Star Wars universe.

The way the Art Department operates is pretty straightforward. "We're really here to service George Lucas' ideas," explains Chiang. "George gave us his ideas and we started drawing and painting. As soon as a design was approved, we tried to make it real in some way: a model, a sculpture, a foamcore or cardboard study, anything that can bring the design one step closer to reality. This is important because it answers a lot of questions about the element being designed - but it also raises a lot of new questions, too," says Chiang with a laugh. "After this was done, we worked with George to refine the design until it was exactly what he wanted. And then we started over again with another element." Just as the Art Department worked on multiple designs at the same time, the different sub-divisions within the department also operated in a sort of creative multitasking. "In the heat of things, you have people designing, others building models, and yet others creating rough versions of what the end result will look like on screen," says Chiang. Even though the drawings necessarily come before the models, and the models before the animatics, the various steps of the creative process soon catch up with one another and coexist in the same timeframe. "Everybody is self-sufficient," says Chiang, who explains that his role involves his guiding the other artists rather than watching their every move. "Everyone knows what they have to do, and they just do it," adds Chiang.

The base of operations of the animatics team is not ILM, but the Art Department itself. "The animatics were done here," explains Art Department Coordinator Blake Tucker, "along with the final shots the animatics team got to work on near the end of post-production. These guys occupy our computer center: this is where, outside of Industrial Light & Magic, most of the computer power can be found."

"I worked very closely with the animatics team," Doug Chiang says. "I didn't just give them the design and then walked away, because of all the interpretation they have to do in the course of their work. So I like to follow them closely and, along with their supervisor David Dozoretz, guide the development of the animatics."

Computers are used for animatics, other pre-visualization processes such as low-resolution compositing, occasional final shots, and titles and subtitles; but the technology stops here. All the design work is done by hand, at the traditional drawing board.