See a tribute photo of Ray Harryhausen and Ralph McQuarrie by concept artist Star Wars concept artist Doug Chiang that he shared on Facebook.Three legends of the industry together at the same time.

Ralph McQuarrie (left), Doug Chiang (center) and Ray Harryhausen (right)

"Truly sad day. Here I am seeing my heroes Ralph [McQuarrie] and Ray Harryhausen meeting for the first time. RIP Ray." - Doug Chiang

This week we lost another film great. Raymond Frederick "Ray" Harryhausen died on May 7, 2013.

He was an American visual effects creator, writer, and producer from California who lived in London, England. He created a form of stop-motion model animation known as "Dynamation."

He worked on Mighty Joe Young, with Willis H. O'Brien, which won the Academy Award for special effects in 1949. His most memoreable films were The 7th Voyage of Sinbad and Jason and the Argonauts, featuring a famous sword fight against seven skeletons.

Doug Chiang started out as a stop-motion artist for Pee Wee's Playhouse, so he probably has a special place in his heart for stop-motion animation.

See more of Doug Chiang's work at dchiang.com Ralph McQuarrie's portfolio at RalphMcQuarrie.comand Ray Harryhausen's work at RayHarryhausen.com

Do you remember the great Harryhausen?

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With the re-release of Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace in 3-D I thought I'd highlight some of the many talented artists involved in the production.

As always, there are a ton of people working on these films, but I can only list the ones on IMDb. I've also moved some names from other sections for clarity and I lumped everyone together regardless of official title.

Production Design by Gavin Bocquet

Design Director
Doug Chiang (as Doug Chang)

Concept Artists
Kun Chang
Neil D'Monte
Tony Wright
Marc Gabbana
Kurt Kaufman
Iain McCaig
Ed Natividad
Jay Shuster
Terryl Whitlach
Brice Cox Jr.
Warren Fu
Jules Mann
Noel Rubin

Storyboard Artists
Benton Jew
Peter Chan
Paul Topolos
Brice Cox Jr.
Warren Fu
Noel Rubin

I know there are more than these. If you know anyone I'm missing just let me know in the comments.

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Overall, if you don't have access to any other concept art books, this is a great resource. If you do have the books or have special edition DVDs I wouldn't get this set for the concept art.

Star Wars concept art is the gold standard of concept art. All the greatest concept illustrators worked on the Star Wars films starting with Ralph McQuarrie. I was especially eager to dig into it and see what was offered.

The Star Wars: The Complete Saga (Episodes I-VI) [Blu-ray] set comes with nine disks. The six movie disks and three bonus disks. The first one has all the deleted, extended and alternate scenes; prop, maquette and costume turnarounds; matte paintings and concept art; supplementary interviews with cast and crew.

This is the one I focused on. The interface is fascinating. Using beautifully animated key scenes from the movie you are taken into the world of each film. The disks then organize all the material by planet and each planet has a section for concept art. Its kind of confusing in a way. Suppose you want to see concept art from Coruscant? Is it under Episode I, II or III? It takes some getting used to.

Each planet has an average of ten pieces of concept art. So, if you do the math its over 90 images. Nice.

The images are amazing and really give insight into the creation of different characters and their history. Nice little touches are the mentions of concept art for the prequels that became part of Star Wars: Clone Wars and the fantastic savagery of the Wookie Kashyyyk warriors.

Like I said, Star Wars concept art is always amazing to look at. These disks are loaded with the best concept art from the films.

Here's the downside. One problem I have with almost all concept art in DVDs is you can't zoom in to get a better look. It has a single image formatted to take up the top and bottom of the screen and that's it. Some art is so rich in detail its frustrating not to be able to check it out.

On the plus side, they're not cropped or modified, so you get the full effect. There's a slide show feature which is nice for cruising through the images one at a time, but you can also jump to any of the images.

Another notable, but common omission, is the credits for the images. As per usual, the art is shown with no indication who drew them. Some of the paintings have signatures like Doug Chiang, but most are anonymous.
Considering how important artists are to visualizing the Star Wars films, I was surprised that there wasn't a single interview with any of the artists. Not even veteran artists like Ralph McQuarrie. That was disappointing. Especially since the other DVDs had full featurettes on the concept artists and it wouldn't have been hard to add them.

The Star Wars Blu-Ray set is a must have for lovers of the films, but disappointing to lovers of concept art.

What did you think of the disks? Would you buy or recommend them?

Below are links to the Blu-Ray disk and a selection of my favorite "Art of Star Wars" books.

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