Rick Sternbach: Drawing Rings around the World

Movie Meltdown - Episode 446

This week we round out our coverage of this year's WonderFest as we talk with Rick Sternbach about space, art and the movies he's worked on. (Including Carl Sagan's Cosmos, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Last Starfighter, The Black Hole, Solaris and Star Trek: The Next Generation.) Plus we are joined by our somewhat annual, reluctant co-host Eric Chu.

And while we work on building our own Cray supercomputer, we also bring up… Deadpool 2, Better Watch Out, the new Lost in Space, doing artwork for science fiction and astronomy magazines, Larry Niven, set design, Alan Tudyk,you create something and then it goes back into it’s raw form, water slide decals, Harold had worked with Hitchcock, Juggernaut, Mars Attacks trading cards, Hal Clement, a different hand/eye skill set, we didn’t have computers in 1978, Theodore Sturgeon, she’d worked on the B-1 bomber, the early days of digital, his pencil drawings of the Gunstar, geometry, I got to see the evolution of the whole process, the Air Force would pay him to play with future concepts, Gordon Dickson, scribbling, I was just nuts about marine mammals, Destination Moon, The Lensman series, Forbidden Planet, Isaac Asimov, Chuck Jones, the Kodan mothership, do the next polygon, Brad Pitt, Arthur C. Clarke, wanted to learn more about cetaceans and pinnipeds, Star Trek 2: the second five year mission of the Enterprise, let them be messy, Joe Haldeman, control panel graphics, organic chem, space conference projects, a well-rounded art experience, planetary models, cell animation, Virginia Madsen, a transistor radio, doggone it... I got to see them take off, Jackson Pollock, twist on a twist, Men into Space, nothing in Earth’s orbit, Gene Roddenberry, there is a lot of structure in there, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Josh Brolin in a catsuit, home invasion, I think my artistic output was a product of the times, one of the Gemini missions, Patrick Warburton, it was important to witness that history, for me… old school was the best school, giddy and wanted to take the risk, X-Men cameos and the golden record on the Voyager spacecraft.

“I will tell you the crazy story…”

To keep up with Rick, check out his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/rick.sternbach

And for more on WonderFest, go to: https://wonderfest.com/