Rick Sternbach
From Memory Alpha, the free Star Trek reference
(written from a Production point of view)
Rick Sternbach (born 6 July 1951; age 58) was the senior illustrator/ designer for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager.
Sternbach was interviewed for the DS9 Season 1 DVD special features "Deep Space Nine: A Bold Beginning" and "Deep Space Nine Sketchbook" on 7 October 2002.
He created several new studio models, including:
- Academy flight trainer
- Ares IV
- Cardassian ATR-4107
- Class 2 shuttle
- Danube-class
- Dauntless-class
- Deep Space 9 (with Herman Zimmerman)
- Delta Flyer
- the Egg
- Friendship 1
- Galor-class
- Intrepid-class
- Intrepid class escape pod
- Jupiter Station
- MIDAS array
- Millennium Gate
- Negh'var warship
- Nova-class
- Prometheus-class
- Romulan scout ship
- Talarian observation craft
- Talarian warship
- Vor'cha-class
- Yridian destroyer
He was also responsible for creating hundreds of props and set pieces, including the mural painting of the Enterprise-D in Picard's ready room. He also developed weaponry, PADDs, tricorders and communicators for Starfleet, Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Bajoran, Kazon, Ferengi, and other races.
He was also the scenic artist for Star Trek Nemesis, providing designs for everything from the Argo shuttle to a Romulan Valdore type sculpture.
As a big fan of Japanese animation, anime references are often secretly placed in his designs, notably "the Egg", a design borrowed from the Dirty Pair.
Together with Michael Okuda, he served as a technical consultant to the script staff, maintaining technical and chronological continuity and inventing scientific terms and technobabble. In 1980 he created several illustrations for the Star Trek Spaceflight Chronology by Stanley and Fred Goldstein. He has also co-written the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual, as well as the Starfleet Technical Database articles in Star Trek: The Magazine.
He has been critical of the Production Design of the 2009 film Star Trek, specifically that of the design of the USS Enterprise (alternate reality). He criticised the apparent lack of line of sight for the nacelles to open space, proportions of various sections, and an overall lack of knowledge of how Star Trek technology works. "Perhaps the designers didn’t know exactly how the different hardware bits worked".
While no longer working on Star Trek, Sternbach continues to create futuristic designs for sci-fi productions.
