RC: We get involved in every last little thing. We do all we can to give that level of art direction to ILM, because they want to hit the ground rolling and do the shot. In fact, one of our artists, Alex Jaeger, was responsible for different variations of the cloaks that Grievous and his bodyguards wear. He went out and got fabric samples of the heavy muslin of the bodyguards’ capes, and the quilted silk of Grievous’ cape. It was Warren’s masterstroke to put capes on Grievous and his bodyguards. And ILM now does cloth so well.

Church did very detailed breakdowns of how the Tripods worked. He worked closely with the Skywalker Ranch animatics teams to make sure that all the creatures’ capabilities were fully utilized.

EW: How did you come up with Grievous’ transformer-like bike?

RC: George said that Grievous needed something that could move like a lizard, meaning that it could climb up walls and go really fast on the straight-aways. But it had to be mechanical. That was a really tough design challenge. I came up with something that could fold its legs and become a moving chain-saw wheel. Then it could shoot the legs out and climb like a lizard. When Steven Spielberg came by during Episode III and saw General Grievous’ bike, he said to George, “That’s the coolest thing you ever designed.” A year later, (Lucasfilm producer) Rick McCallum got a call from Steven. He said, “I want the guy who designed that bike thing to design the tripods for War of the Worlds.”

EW: War of the Worlds was made on an extremely tight schedule. Did any time pressures affect your process of designing the Tripods?

RC: That was a fish to fry. The design for the Tripods was chosen fairly early on and then there was a lot of refining to make it work. Unlike Star Wars, where we had a million different things, this was one hero thing that you’re looking at from different angles — though we’re looking up at them a lot because they’re so tall. It was a really cool design challenge to make them look scary the whole time.

I’m a huge fan of the original movie and especially the book, so I kind of knew what had been done and what Steven wanted. In addition to looking scary, they had to have performance capabilities. He kept referring to them as ballet dancers, which was really interesting. Steven ended up kluging a couple of my designs together. From there I worked with the animatics team at Skywalker Ranch, and then with the modelers at ILM.

I did very detailed breakdowns of how these machines worked. I’d built all these little capabilities into the Tripod, and I wanted to make sure that they were utilized. When the animatics guys were performing with it, I was looking over their shoulders and saying, “Did you know that the mouth parts can fold out and make a more predatory silhouette, and then they can recede?” It was great to work with those guys because they were actually doing the first pass on the movie. Then Steven shot it and ILM did the effects…On Episode III, time was a luxury, but War of the Worlds was the quickest I’ve ever worked.

EW: What tools did you use?

RC: Lots of (Corel) Painter and napkins and pens. Every painting I did was on Painter. On Episode III, I used Painter 6, though I’ve since switched to Painter 9.

EW: Do you use it to emulate oils vs. acrylics, for example, to suggest different moods?

RC: Occasionally, where appropriate. If it’s more of an illustration job, where I have to put this ship in that environment, I will approach things differently than if I have a blank sheet of paper. What Painter has allowed me to do — which you can’t do in the real world — is start off oil painting and then switch to acrylic. Having used it so much, the stuff I do in Painter is exactly what I want it to look like. When you’re doing a watercolor or an oil painting, there’s always a compromise, but with this there is no compromise. There are no excuses anymore. If something can be depicted in two dimensions, you can do it with these programs.

EW: What are you working on now?

RC: I probably can’t say, except that I’m working in L.A. on several pitch projects for big science-fiction movies that have yet to be green lit. It’s work to basically sell ideas to the studios. I’m still employed by ILM, but only technically.