Ron Gress

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Gress (top right) posing with part of Magicam's team with the completed Enterprise model

Ronald "Ron" A. Gress is a Special and Visual effects artist who has specialized in studio model painting, matte painting, and digital painting, eventually becoming visual effects art director/supervisor. Gress has contributed to the production of two Star Trek films.

A 1972 Fine Arts graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, Gress got his first professional employment at Magicam, Inc. in 1979, where he was hired as Model Painter. There he worked on the various studio models used in the production of Star Trek: The Motion Picture, among others the air tram. Though not having received official credit for the production, he has made a significant contribution, when he was appointed assistant to lead painter Paul Olsen of the refit-Enterprise model, and was responsible for the application of the paint job on the secondary hull. [1]

After Magicam, Gress worked in the same capacity for six years for Boss Films (future Trek illustrator John Eaves being his co-worker at the time), working on productions like The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984, with several other Trek alumni including Gregory Jein, Mark Stetson, Christopher Lloyd, and Robert Ito, among others), and 2010 (1984). In 1985 he joined former Magicam co-worker Mark Stetson's company, Stetson Visual Services, and has worked on productions like Die Hard (1988, with Bruce MacRae), The Hunt for Red October (1990, again with Jein and MacRae, as well as with Alan McFarland), Batman Returns (1992) and True Lies (1994).

After a three-year stint as independent contractor, Gress joined Digital Domain in 1996. It was here that Gress came full circle as he was appointed as Visual Effects Art Director to oversee the visual effects for the last Star Trek feature that took place in the prime universe, Star Trek Nemesis, directing among others the crash scene of the USS Enterprise-E and the Scimitar.

Gress stayed in the employment of Digital Domain for ten years, and it was there that Gress made the transition from creating visual effects the traditional was to creating visual effects digitally. Apart from Nemesis, Gress has worked on big productions like The Fifth Element (1997), Armageddon (1998), The Time Machine (2002), and Flags of Our Fathers (2006)

In 2009, Gress moved to Beijing, China, where he was lecturer at the Beijing Film Academy for two years (2009-2011), and has worked on various Chinese movie projects. Presently, he is dividing his time between Beijing and Hollywood as he also works on the television show Boardwalk Empire, that, as of 2012, was still in production.

Ron Gress is featured in the 2011 documentary Sense of Scale, in which several model makers discuss their craft, and which also features Greg Jein, Pat McClung and Gene Rizzardi.

External links

• RONZART - home page
• Ron Gress - personal blog
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• Ron Gress at Linkedin