It's funny that if you watch the behind the scenes content on the prequels, you see so many people working hard to come up with all sorts of designs - aliens, droids, scenery, vehicles, etc. George says, "Make me a hundred aliens." They make the alien designs. Then George picks one or two and puts them into the script, which he finishes a week later without any revision. ;)

The work of those individuals is mostly quite great. For example, look at the architectural design for Naboo. It's beautiful, but we don't see too much of it in detail (if I remember correctly). But it's the implementation of all the pieces into a larger whole that falls apart.

I will say the battle droids looked incredibly stupid, like they had the head and snout of an Afghan Hound.