Ryan Church

Ryan Michael Church is a Hollywood film concept artist who worked on. As the film's concept designer, Church was the one primarily working on the updated design for the USS Enterprise (NCC-1701 alternate reality). He worked on Star Trek from April 2007 through January 2008. He then worked as Concept Illustrator on the sequel  between  and. 

Born in Long Beach, California, Church was taught how to draw by his industrial designer father when he was a child. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles while honing his design skills by taking night classes at the Art Center College of Design. In 1994, he began attending the Art Center full-time, ultimately graduating "with honors as a Transportation Design major with emphasis on Entertainment Design". 

From June 1998 through April 2005 Church was Senior Art Director at Industrial Light & Magic. While there, he supervised concept designs for Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002) and Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005) and did creature designs for the remake of War of the Worlds (2005). He then moved to Los Angeles, where he did design work on the comic adaptation Transformers (2007), which, like Star Trek, was written by Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci. He also did concept art for the film Outlander (2008), starring Ron Perlman. For Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones, Church received a Visual Effects Society Award nomination in 2003 in the category Best Effects Art Direction in a Motion Picture, shared with Alex Jaeger and Erik Tiemens.

Star Trek marked the second time Church has worked with fellow concept artist James Clyne. The two previously worked together on 's Avatar (2009), which stars Zoë Saldana and for which he won an ADG Excellence in Production Design Award in the category Fatansy Film in 2010. He worked on the sequels Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009) and Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011), the science fiction adventure John Carter (2012), and the thriller Zero Dark Thirty (2012) for which he received his third ADG Excellence in Production Design Award nomination in the category Contemporary Film. Other projects include the science fiction sequel TRON: Legacy (2010), the television series Falling Skies (2011), the science fiction drama Real Steel (2011), J.J. Abrams' mystery thriller Super 8 (2011), and the fantasy sequel Thor: The Dark World (2013, starring Chris Hemsworth).

More recent work includes the television documentary Cosmos: A SpaceTime Odyssey (2014), the remake Godzilla (2014), the science fiction sequel Transformers: Age of Extinction (2014), Brad Bird's science fiction adventure Tomorrowland (2015, written and produced by Damon Lindelof, produced by Jeffrey Chernov, music by Michael Giacchino, and production design by Scott Chambliss), and the upcoming video game Star Citizen. 

ADG Excellence in Production Design Awards nominations
Church received ADG Excellence in Production Design Award nominations as Illustrator in the category Fantasy Film
 * for, shared with Scott Chambliss, Dennis Bradford, Curt Beech, Luke Freeborn, Beat Frutiger, Gary Kosko, Aaron Haye, Keith P. Cunningham, Clint Schultz, James Clyne, Paul Ozzimo, John Eaves, Bruce G. Smith, Karen Manthey,C. Scott Baker, Dawn Brown, Kevin Cross, Andrea Dopaso, Jeff Frost, Scott Herbertson, Joseph Hiura, Billy Hunter, Harry E. Otto, Anne Porter, Andrew Reeder,and Jane Wuu
 * for, shared with Scott Chambliss, Ramsey Avery, James Clyne, Lauren Polizzi, Kasra Farahani, Michael E. Goldman, Harry E. Otto, Andrew E.W. Murdock, Jason Baldwin Stewart, Natasha Gerasimova, Steve Christensen, Andrea Dopaso, John Eaves, Nathan Schroeder, Christopher Ross, Victor Martinez, Steven Messing, Karl Strahlendorf, John Chichester, Tex Kadonaga, Kevin Cross, Andrew Reeder, Anne Porter, Jane Wuu, Richard F. Mays, Allen Coulter, Karl Martin, Scott Schneider, Lorrie Campbell, Easton Smith, Tammy Lee, Tim Croshaw, Clint Schultz, and Karen Manthey