For the in-universe article on the illustrator for Incredible Tales, please see Rick Sternbach (artist).

Rick Sternbach (born 6 July 1951; age 60) was the senior illustrator/ designer for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek: The Next Generation, the first two seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and Star Trek: Voyager. He was also the scenic artist for Star Trek Nemesis, providing designs for everything from the Argo shuttle to a Romulan Valdore-type sculpture.

He created the designs for several new studio models, including:

He also was 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. 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, resulting in internal documents as Star Trek: The Next Generation Writers' Technical Manual and Star Trek: Voyager Technical Manual. 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, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual, Star Trek: The Next Generation USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D Blueprints as well as the "Starfleet Technical Database" articles in Star Trek: The Magazine.

Sternbach started out making his designs the traditional way, that is in paper and pencil, but acquired skills in CGI modeling as well, turning in design concepts at a later stage both in paper and pencil and rudimentary CGI models. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 3, Issue 12, pp. 94-97)

He has been critical of the Production Design of the 2009 film Star Trek, specifically that of the design of the USS Enterprise. He criticized 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". [1]

While no longer working on Star Trek, Sternbach continues to create futuristic designs for sci-fi productions. He also actively maintained contact with the Star Trek fan-base through Internet blogs like "Trekbbs" and more recently the "Drex Files" by answering questions and explaining his thought processes on his work for Star Trek. Sternbach is also operating a webshop, "intrep74656", through eBay, selling commercialized editions of his work.

Contents 1 Star Trek credits 2 Star Trek interviews 3 Bibiliography 4 External links

Star Trek credits Edit

Star Trek interviews Edit

• TNG Season 1 DVD special feature "The Making of a Legend" ("Artistic Design")
• TNG Season 3 DVD special feature "Departmental Briefing Year Three" ("Greg Jein: Modelmaker"), interviewed on 27 November 2001
• TNG Season 4 DVD special feature "Select Historical Data" ("A New Ship Debuts"), interviewed on 27 November 2001
• DS9 Season 1 DVD special feature "Deep Space Nine: A Bold Beginning" (interview from 7 October 2002)
• DS9 Season 1 DVD special feature "Deep Space Nine Sketchbook" (interview from 7 October 2002)
• DS9 Season 2 DVD special feature "Deep Space Nine Sketchbook: Season Two" (interview from 7 October 2002)
• DS9 Season 2 DVD special feature "New Station, New Ships" (interview from 7 October 2002)
• VOY Season 5 DVD special feature "Ships of the Delta Quadrant" (interview from 6 October 2003)

BibiliographyEdit

• Starfleet Technical Database; Aeroshuttle Technology - Engineering Report 4.1 - Stardate 56328.74, Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 3, Issue 12, pp. 82-85

External links Edit

• RickSternbach.com - official site
• Rick Sternbach at Wikipedia
• Rick Sternbach at the Internet Movie Database
• 2001 Interview with Rick Sternbach at TrekPlace.com
• 2001 Interview with Rick Sternbach at Ex Astris Scientia
• 2005 Interview with Rick Sternbach at Forgotten Trek
• 2006 Interview with Rick Sternbach at UFP Croatia.com
• 2007 Interview with Rick Sternbach at Forgotten Trek
• 2007 Interview with Rick Sternbach at Seb's Web Archive