Adafruit is celebrating Lunar New Year🐍 Wednesday 1/29/2025. In combination with MLK Day, shipping could be delayed. Please allow extra time for your order to ship!
Today we celebrate concept artist and production designer Doug Chiang. Even if you haven’t heard of him, you’ve probably seen his work. Chiang has worked at Industrial Light and Magic, and has been the concept artist or visual effects art director for movies you may have seen: Terminator 2, Jumanji, Forrest Gump, Ghost, and many Star Wars films including The Force Awakens, Rogue One, The Phantom Menace, and Attack of the Clones.
“The best advice I can give is to start with a very good education, like at CCS for instance,” said Chiang. “It’s essential to learn the core foundation skills of good drawing, composition, and design and not to be lost in the glamour of new tools and techniques that can sometimes disguise poor work with lots of flash over substance.”
Finding inspiration in the most unusual places, Chiang often browses through reference books for fresh ideas. Often, the new connections and patterns inspire him. For example, Darth Maul’s facial tattoos resemble those of indigenous tribes living in the rainforests of Brazil. Queen Amidala’s robes reflect the clothing worn in Asian cultures. The look of the robots deployed during the Trade Federation assault on Naboo were inspired by the elongated facial features common in African tribal art. Even the Federation’s mobile troop transports were designed to look like charging elephants to heighten the audience’s emotional response to them.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
Python for Microcontrollers – Adafruit Daily — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython 2025 Wraps, Focus on Using Python, Open Source and More! #CircuitPython #Python #micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi
EYE on NPI – Adafruit Daily — EYE on NPI Maxim’s Himalaya uSLIC Step-Down Power Module #EyeOnNPI @maximintegrated @digikey
