The LA Times reports that the DVD Premiere Awards (being held tonight) will feature two new awards for DVD menu design and DVD special features. They also talked to Van Ling, who worked on the Episode I & II DVDs. Here's an excerpt:

Ling is another sought-after DVD artist-technician. The 39-year-old L.A. native and 15-year industry veteran is a DVD producer, visual effects supervisor and computer graphics designer. He's known lately for his work on menus. Some of Ling's most notable work includes menu designs for "Star Wars" Episodes I and II, "The Ultimate T2 DVD," and special-edition DVDs of "Independence Day," "The Terminator" and "The Abyss."

Menu work was a natural progression for Ling due to his strong visual-effects and production backgrounds, he says. "Therefore, my menu work tends to be distinguished from many other menus -- I kind of overdo it," he says with a laugh. With both "Star Wars" DVDs, Ling said he had to create animated menus with visuals on a par with Industrial Light & Magic's work on the film, which proved "very challenging."

"Some [menu creators] just take shots from a movie and run it as a montage and put text upon it, but for 'Star Wars,' we couldn't just use the shots from the movie because the scenes we wanted were only two to three seconds long.... For animated menus, you need about 20 seconds that will loop."

You can read the rest of the article by clicking here.