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Dec 1, 2020 · This is a book for all Star Trek fans to treasure, and it comes with a limited edition art card signed by Dan Curry! Order your copy here or here. EXCLUSIVE: First Look at The Artistry of Dan Curry. 8 IMAGES. Go inside the visual artistry behind your favorite Star Trek shows.
- Overview
- Star Trek
- Career outside Star Trek
- Star Trek credits
- Star Trek interviews
- Bibliography
- Star Trek awards
- External links
"Dan Curry is one of Star Trek's heroes. He's an amazingly genius."
– Michael Okuda, Senior Scenic Artist, 4 April 2002 "Departmental Briefing Year Five: Visual Effects" (TNG Season 5 DVD-special feature)
While Dan Curry is usually associated with his VFX work for the modern television franchise, his very first Star Trek credit was actually for the movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, for which he designed the titles as graphics artist, his profession by trade. Apart from this movie, he later made a small uncredited contribution to Star Trek V: The Final Frontier with his friend Ronald B. Moore, when they supervised the VFX of a single effects scene (Flying Starships, p. 77), and revisited his graphic design origins by designing the titles for Star Trek Generations.
A highly respected professional by his peers, Curry has won seven Emmy Awards for his work on Star Trek, an additional twelve nominations (the majority of them shared with close friend and collaborator Ron Moore), supplemented with two International Monitor Awards and one Visual Effects Society Award with an additional nomination to boot, in the process becoming one of the most honored Star Trek production staffers, only surpassed by Michael Westmore, though Curry has more actual wins. 1999 in particular was a fruitful year for Curry when he was nominated no less than four times for an Emmy, winning one of them. His Star Trek origins as a title designer was reflected in his only non-VFX award nomination, when he was (co-)nominated for a graphics design Emmy for the title design of Voyager in 1995.
Hailing from the East Coast, Dan Curry has developed a keen interest in art and film from early childhood on. "Even when playing with toy soldiers, my eye was a camera and I was directing imaginary movies.", Curry recalled. After having seen the classic The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), he even, still as a young boy, managed to construct a crude optical printer with a broken 8mm projector and some tracing paper. Curry graduated with a degree in Fine Arts at the Middlebury College in Vermont and subsequently with a degree in Fine Arts in Film and Theatre at the Humboldt State University in California, before joining the US Peace Corps in Thailand, doing various art, architecture and film jobs, while learning to speak fluent Thai and Lao, aside from meeting his future wife as well, and became a martial arts expert, among others in Tai chi. Upon his return to the United States, Curry first worked as a Fine Arts teacher at college level giving lessons in painting, drawing, graphic design, set design and fabrication, perspective drawing, and rendering until 1979 when he started to work in the motion picture industry, at first as title designer and matte painting artist, the 1982 movie Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid being his first recorded credit as title designer. Credits he accumulated as matte painter before he joined the Star Trek franchise were among others the Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (with Scott Squires and fellow matte painter Syd Dutton) and the original Battlestar Galactica science fiction television series (with David Stipes and based on concept art by Ralph McQuarrie), as well as the movies Caveman (1981), Creepshow (1982) and the 1984 documentary The Jupiter Menace, contracted by David Stipes Productions. (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 3, p. 19)
In the years 1982-1983 Curry worked as art director for Modern Film Effects working on the titles of the 1983 movies Triumphs of a Man Called Horse and Stayin Alive. It was at Modern Film Effects that he met and befriended newcomer and future Star Trek co-worker, Ron B. Moore. (Incidentally, Modern Film Effects, was one of the very few, if not only visual effects house in existence at the time, not being hired to work on Star Trek: The Original Series) During the 1980s he did the title designs for a large number of additional productions, including some blockbusters like The Right Stuff (1983), Top Gun (1986, while employed as vice president, director of creative affairs at the by him mentioned Cinema Research) and Beverly Hills Cop II (1987), eventually leading up to The Voyage Home. Even after he was hired on Star Trek, he continued to do so up to 1999 on productions such as Fatal Attraction (1987), Days of Thunder (1990), Wayne's World (1992, and its sequel in 1993) or Superstar (1999), when production of The Next Generation was in hiatus, until his duties on the franchise required his full attention, due to the proliferation of Star Trek productions, starting with Deep Space Nine.
After his tenure at Star Trek, Curry worked as VFX supervisor on the fantasy horror series Moonlight (2007-2008), the comedy series Chuck (2008 while employed at Eden FX, co-starring Bonita Friedericy and Tony Todd, and produced and occasionally directed by former Voyager cast member Robert Duncan McNeill), with the television drama series Cult (2013) being his more recent work.
That Dan Curry is highly respected by his peers, is reflected in the fact of his membership of several motion picture organizations like the Directors Guild of America, The American Society of Cinematographers (ASC), The Producers Guild of America, The Visual Effects Society (responsible for the VES Awards), as well as being a founding member of the International CG Society. Aside from this he has served as governor of The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences' Visual Effects Peer Group (responsible for the VFX Emmy awards).
Curry has concurrently lent his talents to "The Overview Institute", an non-profit organization, founded in 2008 and made up of real world space specialists like astronauts, scientists and authors, dedicated to "research and educate both the space community and the general public on the nature and psycho/social impact of directly experiencing space". As consultant he is member of "The Overview Effect" team, the part of the organization, responsible for visualizing the work of the institute by producing documentaries and the like. In the team he has been joined by former Star Trek alumni Douglas Trumbull and John Eaves. (X)
Together with his wife Ubolvan and son Devin, Curry operates his own small, Bell Canyon, California based, independent production company Evergreen Productions, LLC, producing predominantly short drama features, among others Eviction (2004), Hired Guns (2011), and the recent The Chronicles of Elijah Sincere (2012).
(This list is currently incomplete.)
•Star Trek films
•Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home – Title Designer
•Star Trek V: The Final Frontier – Visual Effects Supervisor (uncredited)
•Star Trek Generations – Title Designer
•TNG: – Storyboard Artist / Visual Effects Supervisor / Visual Effects / Visual Effects Producer
•Star Trek DVD and Blu-ray special features:
•on •TNG Season 1 DVD-special feature, "The Making of a Legend: Visual Effects"
•TNG Season 1 DVD-special feature, "Memorable Missions"
•TNG Season 2 DVD-special feature, "Departmental Briefing Year Two: Production", interviewed on 5 September 2001
•TNG Season 2 DVD-special feature, "Departmental Briefing Year Two: Memorable Missions" ("Loud As A Whisper", "The Dauphin"), interviewed on 5 September 2001
•TNG Season 3 DVD-special feature, "Mission Overview Year Three: Special Guests on the Bridge"), interviewed on 5 September 2001
•Star Trek: The Artistry of Dan Curry, December 2020 – Co-author, Illustrator
As the second all-time highest honored, but most award winning, Star Trek staffer, Dan Curry received the following award wins and nominations:
•Emmy Award: Dan Curry received the following Emmy Award wins and nominations, all in the category Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series, safe for the 1995 nomination for Voyager:
•1989 Emmy Award nomination for the episode "Q Who", shared with Ronald B. Moore, Peter W. Moyer, and Steve Price
•1990 Emmy Award nomination for the episode "Deja Q", shared with Ronald B. Moore, Peter W. Moyer, Steve Price, and Don Lee
•1992 Emmy Award win for the episode "A Matter Of Time", shared with Ronald B. Moore, David Takemura, Erik Nash, Don Lee, Peter Sternlicht, Adam Howard, Syd Dutton, and Robert Stromberg
•1994 Emmy Award win for TNG: "All Good Things...", shared with David Stipes, Michael Backauskas, Scott Rader, Adam Howard, and Erik Nash
Nov 24, 2020 · Take a look inside Titan Book's latest Star Trek offering, a celebration of the concept art and VFX work of TNG, Voyager, and DS9 legend Dan Curry. Gizmodo Jalopnik
Dec 1, 2020 · One of the respected luminaries of the " Star Trek " universe is seven-time Emmy Award-winning visual effects supervisor, matte painter, prop maker, title designer, and storyboard artist Dan...
Nov 20, 2020 · The nicely designed full color hardcover, Star Trek: The Artistry of Dan Curry is designed and reads like a true sequel to Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens landmark 1995 book The Art of Star Trek, once the only definitive look at the artwork behind the franchise (we’ve covered nearly all the Star Trek art books since then here at borg ).
Star Trek: The Artistry of Dan Curry. Real world article (written from a Production point of view) Author (s): Dan Curry and Ben Robinson. Artist (s): Dan Curry. Publisher: Titan Books. Published: 1 December 2020. Pages: 204. Timespan: TNG – ENT. Reference (s): ISBN 1785659340 (hardcover)
Dec 1, 2020 · Star Trek: The Artistry of Dan Curry. Hardcover – December 1, 2020. Hardback volume showcasing the diverse work of one of Star Trek's most talented alumni, Dan Curry, whose contributions to the TV shows and movies include visual effects, practical effects, title design and weaponry.
- Dan Curry, Ben Robinson
