Via Thestar.com:

Stars Wars fans anticipating The Force Awakens are having nerdgasms over changes to franchise lore gleaned from the teaser trailer: new droids, lightsabers and Stormtrooper outfits and maybe even a revamped Millennium Falcon.There will be many other visual innovations by the time this seventh Star Wars film hits theatres Dec. 18, series concept artist Doug Chiang promises.But if all goes according to plan, he adds, many of the tweaks will be perceived by the mind rather than the eye.

“It’s all about invisible effects,” he says from San Francisco, in an interview to mark the new release of the previous six Star Wars films in downloadable form as an extras-loaded set called Star Wars: The Digital Movie Collection.“There are so many visual effects in there but to the audience hopefully it doesn’t register with them. And it’s a curious thing because what we try to do in Star Wars even though we’re creating fantastic worlds is to create worlds that are invisible to the audience. Because the audience shouldn’t be looking at the background they should be looking at the characters and the story.” The Oscar-winning Chiang, 53, holds the title of vice-president and executive creative director at Lucasfilm the Disney-owned company that creates Star Wars movies.

More important to Star Wars fans he has a job that many of them would kill for: Chiang gets to advise series creator George Lucas as to how everything should look in that galaxy far far away. He’s been doing it for 20 years since January, 1995 when he joined a small team of people working with Lucas on his top-secret plans to make a prequel series to the original Star Wars trilogy, which had ended with The Return of the Jedi in 1983.

Click below to read the full article.