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Star Wars Prequels' Art Director Doug Chiang Talks
inherent writes: "Recently, representatives of three fansites covering Westwood's upcoming release, Earth and Beyond Online had the opportunity to interview Doug Chiang, Art Director for the Star Wars prequels, and the designer of the spacecraft models in Earth and Beyond Online. Chiang speaks on topics like the differences between film and digital animation, advice for upcoming digital artists, and the now infamous Jar Jar Binks. The interview transcript is available at Earth and Beyond Portal"
Killing off Jar Jar in Episode 3 would make the fans happy, as well as providing a pleasant "Mr. Hooper's gone" introduction for children to learn the realities of death.
Besides that, I (and others, no doubt..) would actually go see one if I knew Jar Jar was going to get snuffed out beforehand.
My $0.02,
Bowie J. Poag
in terms of setting yourself out from the crowd, at least in graphic design terms, there is no substitute for having classical training in the visual arts. too many people think that they're hot stuff just because they can use photoshop.
Taco, you wrote:
;)
"From what I can see, Star Wars was originally part of a social movement, the gradual change of geeks, if you will, from the shadows to the mainstream."
I sort of agree with this statement. However, I think you are missing the larger picture here. The awesome thing about Star Wars is that you don't/didn't have to be a geek to enjoy it. It was a huge part of life for us children of the mid/late 70's and early 80's. It was hugely successful because it appealed to all classes, races, and creed. It was a magical movie that could make you forget all your problems for a couple of hours, or if you were lucky, several months on end in toys, etc.
Now, IMO, here's the issue for Mr Lucas. He made the mistake of creating his best art at an early age. The rest of his life has been spent trying to recapture it, and he has (so far) failed. Imagine if you were in his shoes...would you pump out lack-luster fare trying to recapture the magic you created, or move on? I doubt you *COULD* move on. Not many people can say they shaped a generation, he can. Too bad he's now trying to shape another generation into being little zombie consumers. Just my opinion of course
Sent from your iPad.
He seems to be saying that the special effects type work of Video games is more difficult and detailed than the same type of work in Movies. I thought that was pretty interesting, as I would have though the opposite. Of course I never have been much of a game player.
But there have been many games based on movies, and they seem to be able to produce / create a game much faster than a movie. Also, I never have seen a video game budget approach the numbers they give for some of the big movies these days. (Yes, I realize they have to pay the actors and such)
It still seems to me that making a movie would be much more time consuming and diffucult than a video game. IF for no other reason than the fact that you have to mix the reality and digitally created scenes perfectly, whereas in a video game, it is all digital.
I guess Final Fantasy would be the best type of comparison, since it was all digitally generated.
-- -- Warning. Do not stare directly at the sun.
You're right on.
Lucas is the very definition of a wonder boy. He had a stunning success early on that he was never able to top in his later years. (The minor caveat to giving him that label is that he was not entirely from out of left field. American Graffiti was a decent film, especially for such an inexperienced director. But even with that considered, "Star Wars" was a shock to everybody.)
Fortunately for us, he hasn't seemed too interested in commiserating on his one success-- he's done since pretty much what it seems like he's wanted to do, from Indiana Jones to ILM to, uh, Willow. Unfortunately for us, he's insisted on continually tinkering with both our memories of that one success and the product itself for his own amusement and profit (by churning out lackluster sequels, except Empire, and by revising his work years later in "Special Editions" with his in-decline instincts as a filmmaker).
It's testament to the strength of the original movie that a generation was so impressed by it as to put up with the shitty prequels today. But by accepting these shitty prequels and giving Lucas our money,* we're condoning them, and so he's just going to continue on his current path. I don't know any kid that speaks of Episode I with awe in his voice. The recent movies are just not good enough to hold that sway, and the goodwill earned by the first two is all that's keeping the current series afloat. The returns are diminishing.
So what's next for Lucas? Episodes II and III, followed by Indiana Jones 4, of course. Yes, he did great work in his younger days, but these days it's pretty much all shoddy work built on the good craftsmanship of years past. It's too bad. If Star Wars hadn't been the monster success it was, maybe he would have still been challenged as a filmmaker in some way or another. But that's what happens when nobody around you says "no."
All IMO, of course. Please debate.
*I should disclose that I'm not even immune to the problems here, as I was actually watching my Episode I DVD when this story was posted. Sigh.
Color me a skeptic, but I'll believe in this so called 'Star Wars Episode II' when I can go to theater and see it with my own two eyes. Don't believe everything you read, this 'StarWars' is pure fiction. Pictures can be faked, and video can be edited. I'm waiting for some good solid PROOF of this 'Star Wars: Episode II'. Until then it's just so much hokem.
Wait, what were we talking about? Jar-Jar must die? I'm down with that. But so many people here want to see Jar-Jar die. I want to see something else happen. I want Jar-Jar to be turned into that monster in Jabba's palace from "Return of the Jedi". That would rock, cause then Jar-Jar would be this painfully, horribly disfigured creature, AND we would have all seen him die a painfull death already, no waiting.
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
Jar Jar is important to the story line. Yes, he is silly, he talks like mickey mouse on crack, and he flops around stupidly, but had it not been for Jar Jar, there would be no episode 2 or 3.. or the rest even. If Qui Gon and Obi Wan had not stumbled across
Jar Jar, they would have never gotten transport to the naboo city, nor would they have cannon fodder types to fight the war with the battle droids. The trade federation would have won, and the evil sith schemes would have prospered.. probably would have started the elimination of the jedi a few years earlier.. So, next time when you bash jar jar, realize that he is important to the story.
Have you ever wondered why so many creative people produce wonderful material when they first start out, but when they become rich and famous their material sucks? In many instances the reason is that when someone is not well known they listen to other people's advice and criticism, and this limits certain excesses that might spill out of their work. Once they become big names they get the belief that they can do no wrong. Worse still, other people become too intimidated to criticize them. Read any recent Steven King book. Look what Gene Rodenberry did to the first Star Trek movie. He was allowed to create his complete vision, and it was simply too much of his vision. That's what happened to Star Wars Episode One.
The Moore-Murphy Law: The number of things that will go wrong will double every 2 years.
I'm just stabbing in the dark here, but probably because there's not a single instance of any game selling anywhere near enough units to even dream of making even the most modest profit.
Honestly not trying to be a troll here, but with a sub-1% desktop marketshare, you can't be surprised that expensively produced games aren't being produced for Linux yet.
I'll tell you what _did_ suck about _The Phantom Menace_.
Try that confused mess of a political subplot, something to do with Naboo and the taxation of trade routes and a Trade Federation that came from God knows where and controls God knows which and wants God knows what from Naboo--hell, does _any_ of that make any sense?
Try Johnny one-note characters like Qui Gon, Obi Wan, and Amidala: Qui Gon hardly utters anything other than gnomic pronouncements about the Force and the prophecy (I know, one can argue that Obi Wan from _Star Wars_ was little better, but Alec Guinness is ten times the actor that Liam Neeson is, and he makes Obi Wan interesting in a way that Neeson, with his monotonous delivery, utterly fails to do with Qui Gon.) Obi Wan has hardly any dialogue of importance at all; he's there to swing a lightsaber. Amidala is the concerned child queen and nothing else, aside from a few lines of painful dialogue (e.g. "My caring for you will remain.")
Try the finale of the climactic battle, which uses the "single ship sneaks in and blows up the great fortress" plot for the _third time in four movies_. That it's done by _accident_, by a character whose most memorable dialogue in the whole sequence is, "Let's try spinning, that's a good trick!", makes it all the more painful.
In comparison to all this, Jar Jar is a positive breath of fresh air. I hate to think of how dreary some of the scenes in _Phantom Menace_ would have been without him--hell, in all those interminable scenes at the beginning of the movie where Qui Gon and Obi Wan are trying to get off Naboo, Jar Jar is the only interesting thing on the screen. He's goofy and silly, yes, but oddly thoughtful at times (such as when he tells Amidala that the Gungans aren't going to give up without a fight--he's still proud of the people who banished him.)
But everyone hates him, of course. At least, everyone _here_ hates him. I guess it's all part of that attitude, so prevalent among fans of things like Star Wars and Babylon 5, that _hates_ children and everything that is perceived as childish or reminding one of childhood. I daresay that, considering that many fans are probably only recently emerged from childhood themselves (or, depending on your point of view, still there), this attitude is understandable. Jar Jar, so the conventional wisdom goes, is for the kids--therefore, the sooner he dies a gruesome death, the better.
hyacinthus.
If you want to read a really stallar critique of Lucas and the Star Wars movies, check out this Salon article by David Brin. It was written after SW:TPM came out, and I think it does a great job of tearing Lucas apart >:) IMO, Lucas is basically a hack with a really high budget.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.