Closing Plenary Speaker - Wednesday November 14, 2018

Ryan Church
Concept Design Supervisor, Lucasfilm.


From an early age Ryan liked to draw. Taught by his father, an Industrial Designer, Ryan would study Design at UCLA and Transportation Design at Art Center College of Design. A fascination with dinosaurs, insects and the rest of the natural world has always been a main source of inspiration for Ryan in his creative endeavours.

Ryan graduated with honors and started his career at Walt Disney Imagineering.

Ryan soon moved to Northern California at Industrial Light and Magic's Digital Features division during 1998-1999 and to Lucasfilm from 1999-2004 was a Concept Art Director on Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith. Returning to ILM Ryan was a Senior Art Director while working on War of the Worlds (2005).

Ryan made the move back to Southern California and pursued many projects as a member of the Local 800 Art Directors Guild, Ryan worked as Illustrator or Concept Artist on such projects as Star Trek (2009),

Transformers 2 (2009), and James Cameron's Avatar (2009), Transformers 3 (2011),
Disney's John Carter (2012), Zero Dark Thirty (2012), Star Trek Into Darkness (2013), Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014), Godzilla (2014), Tomorrowland (2014) and Lucasfilm's Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Rogue One, as well as many video game and other design projects.

In 2010 Ryan won a ADG Award for Excellence in Production Design for Avatar

Ryan rejoined Industrial Light and Magic in February 2014 and now works at Lucasfilm on many different projects. He lives with his wife Tracy in Marin County and chooses his vacation destinations based on their proximity to locations containing insects from his bucket list.