Why he rules: In one of his earliest credited gigs, Crowley was the main set designer for the first episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, where he helped create the distinctive look of the Promenade, Ops, Quark’s bar and other key locations. He also designed the sets for Mystery Men — and the current exhibit of superhero costumes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute, where he’s used mirrors and clever staging to give a feeling of superhero costumes emerging out of nowhere. But he’s probably best known for being production designer on Batman Begins, creating the new Batmobile, the Tumbler. He bought toy models of a Lamborghini and a Hummer, cut them apart and combined them, then stuck the cockpit from a P-38 Lightning on. The hodge-podge looked awful — but it was a start. It took several radical revisions to wind up with the Tumbler that rocked the screen in Begins.
What he’s working on: He’s production designer on the Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight, including some new Bat-toys.
