Page 72 - Star Wars Insider #181

INTERVIEW: DOUG CHIANG

how you’re designing and using that tool. I’d like to “The whole reason I 09
try that.’ And then I could go to another artist and
study what they were doing and I could merge the moved out to the West
two techniques. It became this slow, organic process
where I started to discover my style.” Coast was to eventually
It was in this period that Chiang discovered his
love for the marker-rendering style of drawing. “I make my way to Industrial
really gravitated towards it, and I still use it now,” he Light & Magic.”
says. “It’s freeform sketching with a broad, 30-percent
gray marker. Even though markers aren’t supposed
to be used as an initial sketching tool, I really like it
because of the happy accidents you get from using it hopes that this would be my
on Xerox paper, and how it bleeds and blends.” ticket into ILM.” He admits it was
With his techniques expanding, Chiang utilised a huge gamble, but it paid off
them to create works that drew from his infl uences when he was then hired as ILM’s
and created a unique style of his own. “I’ve always Visual Effects Art Director.
08 Chiang
loved wildlife art, and Western paintings, and with Ralph Chiang remembers his fi rst

landscapes in general, but then I also love science- McQuarrie day at the ILM offices as a surreal
and Ray

fiction and other worlds,” he explains. “I started to experience. “I was walking down
Harryhausen
combine those, so a lot of my personal pieces at that at George the hall and seeing people that I
time blended two or three genres. I loved it because it Lucas’ saw in The Making of Star Wars
Skywalker
was actually twisting what you’re familiar with into when I was a kid,” he recalls with
Ranch.
something very fresh, and a lot of what we do in the genuine awe. “People like Steve

film industry is that kind of thinking. I didn’t know 09 A digital Gawley, Dennis Muren… Icons
production
it at that time, but that was where I was going with painting of of the industry! And here I was at
my personal style.” desert cargo the same company, in the same 10
transports building. It was mind-blowing.
from 2010.
THREE WEEKS PLUS The small art department was
About a year later, a former colleague from Digital 10 Chiang honed made up of some of the industry’s
his skills
Productions, Steve Beck, called Chiang from his new best talents. I knew they were the
during 1990
art department job at Industrial Light & Magic in with weekly best of the best, and I just felt so
Northern California. “He called me and said, ‘Hey, personal thankful to be among them. But
assignments.
I have a three-week project for a film that we’re I also felt so inadequate, in terms

bidding on. Would you like to do it?’ 11 Another of having so much to learn.”
personal
“Now, the whole reason I moved out to the West While others might have
project.
Coast was to eventually make my way to Industrial cracked under the pressure of
Light & Magic,” Chiang grins. “So, even though it 12 A worker- working with such industry
robot concept
was only a three-week project, I dropped everything. giants, Chiang was made of
(Marker and
I packed up and moved up to Marin County, in the pen, 2006). sterner stuff. “The fear really
motivated me,” he insists.
“Once I got in there, and I was
08
doing visual-effects design for
11

films, I knew that I had to up my
game. I had to improve my skills
because the job really demanded
that, and I really wanted to feel
like I belonged there.”
Chiang’s solution was to do
even more work in his spare time.
“I set a goal that for one year I
would do personal projects and
paintings,” he reveals. “Every
week, I would give myself an
assignment that I would realize
on the weekends and turn into

a final production painting. I
would do that every week for
a year. It could be any subject
matter, and I really pushed
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