Steve Burg was a conceptual artist and illustrator who made an unwittingly early Star Trek contribution to the spin-off television series, Star Trek: The Next Generation. It was he who originally designed for David Stipes Productions the Promellian battle cruiser, built by Ron Thornton, for use in Night of the Creeps (1986), which was later reused for the third season episode "Booby Trap".
A decade later, Burg, now member of visual effects company Foundation Imaging, also did the conceptual artwork for USS Voyager's crash landing in the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Timeless", [1](X) as well as creating, both concept with Dan Curry and CGI build with John Teska, Species 8472 for Voyager, (VOY Season 4 DVD-special feature, "The Birth of Species 8472") and on which he co-authored an article for the UK publication Effects Special. Though Rick Sternbach was, and remained, the main production illustrator for Voyager, confidence in, and ease of cooperation with Foundation grew to such an extent that a few of its CGI artists were on occasion allowed to design the "ship-of-the-week". Aside from Brandon MacDougall, Burg had the distinction of being the other one. His responsibilities as designer entailed design and build of the CGI model of the Species 8472 bio-ship, as well as the design of the Krenim weapon ship (built by his now supervisor Thornton) for the season four two-parter "Year of Hell", while Sternbach himself remained responsible for the smaller Krenim ships. (Sci-Fi & Fantasy Models, issue 32, September 1998, pp. 51-52; Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 6, p. 51; Star Trek Voyager: A Celebration, pp. 206, 209)
He shortly returned as an independent contractor in the employ of Foundation where he worked as a visual effects art director for the 2001 Star Trek: The Motion Picture (The Director's Edition) DVD release.
On his work on Species 8472, Burg was interviewed for Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 2, Issue 2. As CGI illustrator, Burg has contributed to several outings in the Star Trek: Ships of the Line calendar series.
Career outside Star trek[]
A self-taught illustrator, Steve Burg was born in New Jersey, but did receive a formal education after he moved to California, becoming an alumnus of the Film Graphics and Animation program at the California Institute of the Arts. Burg has worked as animator, conceptual artist, illustrator, and storyboard artist on projects such as The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984, together with a slew of future Star Trek alumni), The Wraith (1986), The Abyss (1989), Total Recall (1990), Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), J. Michael Straczynski's Babylon 5 (1993, already in the employ of Foundation Imaging and the Vorlon ships his most recognizable contributions, design elements of which later creeping up in his Star Trek ship designs).
After his tenure at Foundation and Voyager, Burg worked as an independent contractor on Waterworld (1995), Contact (1997), The Matrix (1999), Titan A.E. (2000), Bryan Singer's X-Men (2000), Evolution (2001), The Time Machine (2002), The Chronicles of Riddick (2004, alongside Gregory Jein, Daren Dochterman, Glenn Hetrick and Ve Neill), Alien vs. Predator (2004), Prometheus (2012, co-written by Damon Lindelof),Interstellar (2014, again alongside Jein), The Martian (2015), and Alien: Covenant (2017).
Bibliography[]
- "Species 8472–design concept", Effects Special, Volume 1.1, 1998, pp. 60-66 – Co-author
- Star Trek: Ships of the Line calendars – Co-illustrator
- 2003 – May and October spreads
Further reading[]
- "Behind the Scenes: Designing Species 8472", Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 2, Issue 2, 2001, pp. 27-33
External links[]
- SteveBurg.com – official site
- SteveBurg.Blogspot.com – official blog
- Steve Burg at DeviantArt.com
- Steve Burg at the Internet Movie Database