Wah Chang
Wah Ming Chang (August 2, 1917 – December 22, 2003) was a Chinese-American designer, sculptor, and artist. With the encouragement of his adoptive father, James Blanding Sloan, he began exhibiting his prints and watercolors at the age of seven to highly favorable reviews. Chang worked with Sloan on several theatre productions and in the 1940s, they briefly created their own studio to produce films. He is known later in life for his sculpture and the props he designed for "", including the tricorder and communicator. Life and career. The Chang family moved from Honolulu, Hawaii to San Francisco, California  and about 1920 opened the Ho-Ho Tea Room on Sutter Street, which became a favorite venue for the city's Bohemian artists. Wah-Ming's mother, Fai Sue Chang, was a graduate of Berkeley's California School of Arts and Crafts (today's California College of the Arts), where she specialized in fashion design and etching. When she died in 1928, her husband persuaded Wah Ming Chang's art teacher and family friends, the highly respected printmaker, puppeteer, and theatre designer, James Blanding Sloan and his wife Mildred Taylor, to become his son's legal guardians. Sloan exhibited Wah  Ming's etchings and watercolors in public exhibitions as early as 1925 to favorable reviews in the San Francisco Bay Area and later in the largest art colony on the Pacific Coast, Carmel-by-the-Sea. The child became part of Sloan's family, traveled in 1926 to Taos, New Mexico for the on-site study of American Indian culture, and in 1928 displayed his block prints in joint exhibitions with Sloan at the prestigious Philadelphia Print Club and in Pasadena, California. He became a valued assistant in several of Sloan's marionette theatres as well as in productions for  the Hollywood Bowl Ballet and the “Cavalcade of Texas.” In the mid-1940s Chang formed a joint studio business with Sloan, The East-West Film Company, and produced such memorable films as "Pick a Bale of Cotton" (an interview and performance with the legendary blues and folk singer Lead Belly in 1944) and the highly controversial anti-war short (1946–47), "The Way of Peace", created in part with elaborate miniature sets and puppets in stop-motion. For "Star Trek", Chang built costumes for the salt vampire ("The Man Trap"), the Gorn ("") and Balok's false image ("The Corbomite Maneuver"). He created  tribbles by using artificial fur stuffed with foam, the Neanderthals in "The Galileo Seven", and the Romulan Bird of Prey ("Balance of Terror"), and the Vulcan harp first seen in "Charlie X" and later seen in "The Conscience of the King", "Amok Time", "The Way to Eden"; and "". Chang is mistakenly credited with having created the phaser; it was actually designed by the Art Director of the original series, Matt Jefferies. Jefferies' phaser was not accepted, and Chang redesigned it for him. His other film credits include sculpting the maquette of "Pinocchio" which was used as the reference for the  animators of the classic Walt Disney feature, and articulated deer models for "Bambi". He designed the spectacular headdress worn by Elizabeth Taylor in the feature film "Cleopatra". Other work included building the title object from 1960s movie "The Time Machine", and the dragon seen (only in the English-dubbed version) of "Goliath and the Dragon" (1960). Chang's firm, Project Unlimited, Inc., would win Academy Award recognition for its special effects, but Chang was not listed on the award, due to the way the credits were submitted to the Academy. Film historian Bob Burns reported that Chang didn't object  to this. "He was the most humble, gentle man I've ever known in my life," Burns said. "He never boasted about anything he did, and he just did remarkable stuff." In addition, Chang built the artificial creature in "The Architects of Fear" episode of the original "The Outer Limits", some props for the original "Planet of the Apes" film, the frightening skeleton animated in "The Power", the flying machine in "The Master of the World", and the dinosaurs in "Land of the Lost". Chang's work as a stop-motion animator through the effects company Centaur Productions, operated with  fellow artist Gene Warren, has been enjoyed for years in the cartoons "Hardrock, Coco and Joe" and "Suzy Snowflake". Later in life, Chang moved to Carmel Valley, California, where he produced sculptures of wildlife. In 1941, Wah Ming was diagnosed with polio after suffering flu-like symptoms. After an extended stay at the Twin Oaks Sanitarium hospital in San Gabriel, California, and treatments that included confinement in an iron lung. He eventually would walk again, but for the rest of his life, never had enough strength in his lungs to be able to blow up a balloon. While his earlier  creative efforts were concerned with special effects and film related wonders, his more mature artistic creations were delightful bronze sculptures and whimsical statuary. The latter ranged from a life-sized Dennis the Menace, commissioned by creator Hank Ketcham and displayed in Dennis Park in Monterey, California, to the smaller statues such as "Girl and Frog", which is owned by a private collector in Los Angeles. Documentaries. Chang produced the educational 1970 short film "Dinosaurs: The Terrible Lizards", a stop-motion feature which discussed life in the Mesozoic Era. It would later gain a "Revised Edition" in 1986. Chang appeared in  the documentary "The Fantasy Film Worlds of George Pal" (1985) (Produced and directed by Arnold Leibovit). Mr. Chang was featured in the documentary "" (1993), produced and directed by Clyde Lucas. Sculptures. Chang produced bronze sculptures in collaboration with Henry "Bob" Jones after meeting at Disney.