The team had earned Lucasfilm’s respect with their work on the Classic Trilogy vehicles book, and had created progressively more new material for the expanded Star Wars Universe. This led to more books being planned, and also being granted unprecedented access when the new film, The Phantom Menace, was in production. This included a visit to the filmsets at Leavesden Studios in London and also an expenses paid trip to…….

 
 

 
……Skywalker Ranch! Here, Hans poses in front of the main building. The team from DK, artists, editor David Pickering and designer Iain Morris, spent two weeks in these idyllic surroundings researching the book and meeting some of the most talented people in the world who worked on the film.

 
 

 
Richard liked Mr Lucas’s lake. The artists spent most of their time in the Film Production Art Department, where no licensee had been allowed to work before. Even Lucasfilm employees did not have access. It can only be reached by placing a security key in a special lock on the elevator control panel, and keys had never been issued to anyone outside the Art Department, until…..

 
 
 
…… Richard and Hans came to town.
 


 
In the Art Department, the amazingly talented concept artists headed by Doug Chiang, pictured here with Hans and Richard in San Diego, made the DK team feel very welcome and helped them right from the off. Having David West Reynolds on site also proved invaluable, and his analytical mind could always isolate the issues and create rationale for the fictional universe.

 
 

 
With all that support, the artists could hardly fail to do a good job. Richard’s AAT Battletank is a prime example of how big a part the DK artists were to play in the grand scheme of things as his illustration was sent to ILM to use as reference for the interior, which had not been previously designed, and was built as a fireproof model for an explosion.

 


 
On the team’s 2004 visit to ILM when planning the Revenge of the Sith Incredible Cross-Sections book, famous model maker Don Bies took the opportunity to reprimand Richard for making the tank interior so complex and difficult to model!

 

 
Doug Chaing also sent the munitions Richard designed for the tank to ILM to be used for the film.
 

 
An interesting challenge for Hans when designing the interior of the Naboo Starfighter concerned the lack of room to accommodate the R2 droid’s shoulders in the ship’s design. Many faxes flew across the Atlantic between Hans and David exploring different solutions.
 
 
 
This was an early idea to create a permanently installed half-droid, but information came through that a normal R2 unit would be seen loaded into the fighter from below…..
 

 
…..and the solution eventually adopted was to have telescopic legs and head to enable R2 to fit as seen in this late pencil version. Another example of the DK team creating Star Wars canon.
 
 
 
The finished result contains much that is unchanged from the earlier pencil version, demonstrating that the team’s ideas and designs had a smooth passage through the rigorous approvals procedure. This was usually (but not always) the case.

 
 

 
DK Incredible Cross-Sections and Inside The Worlds Of Star Wars books are now to be found in every department at Skywalker Ranch, Big Rock Ranch and ILM as the major reference source on all Star Wars ships and many of the locations and buildings. They have also been used by Lucas Arts in the creation of some of the Star Wars computer games.