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Ryan Church

Ryan Church is a Concept Design Supervisor for both Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. He has been behind many of the concepts shown on StarWars.com's Art of Revenge, and is known for his vehicle designs, upon which many of the vehicles in the latter two episodes of the Prequel Trilogy are based.

BiographyEdit

Church attended UCLA, but honed his artistic skills through night courses at the Art Center College of Design. In 1994, he began to study full-time at Art Center, focusing on industrial design. He graduated with honors and a major in Transportation Design.

After college, he was hired by Walt Disney Imagineering and did freelance work simultaneously for Universal Studios. He then left Disney and was hired on by Industrial Light & Magic, where he worked for 3 years before ascending further, directly to Skywalker Ranch, shortly after the release of The Phantom Menace. He became the Concept Design Supervisor for Episode II, and, in its post-production, the Senior Art Director. He would reprise both positions after Episode II's release on the production of Episode III. While he was beginning work on Episode III's post-production, he taught classes for a short time in Advanced Entertainment Design at Art Center. He also collaborated with fellow artist Alex Alvarez at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects to create a series of demonstration DVDs for aspiring artists that explained some of his techniques. Steven would continue with ILM through the production of War of the Worlds, where his designs proved pivotal to the final look of the towering Tripods in the film.

Today, Church lives in southern California as a freelance artist, though he maintains ties with ILM. His current client list includes Paramount Studios, Mattel, Sony Pictures, Blue Sky Studios, Walt Disney, and Electronic Arts.

Original designsEdit

Ryan Church is probably the artist that has exerted the most influence of any individual on the worlds of Episodes II and III. Although he specializes in futuristic vehicles and spacecraft, his contributions run the spectrum of design, from planets to characters.