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Rick Stratton with early Klingon

Rick Stratton testing an early Klingon makeup design for Star Trek: The Motion Picture

Richard "Rick" Stratton (born 5 June 1957; age 66) is a special effects and makeup artist who worked on several Star Trek projects between 1979 and 2002. Stratton has not received on-screen credit for any of his Trek work.

Stratton started his career in the make-up department in the late '70s when he worked with Ben Lane and Leo Lottito at Warner Brothers and when Fred Phillips hired him to work on Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Among his earlier credits as makeup artist are Battle Beyond the Stars (1980, for which both received a Saturn Award nomination for Best makeup in 1981), Under the Rainbow (1981, with Fred Phillips, Joy Zapata, and Steve LaPorte), Q (1982), the comedy Class Reunion (1982, with Star Trek: The Original Series makeup designer John Chambers), makeup designer for Gregory Peck's character in the television series The Blue and the Gray (1982), V: The Final Battle (1984), The Last Starfighter (1984, with Werner Keppler, Brian Wade, and Gerald Solomon), Cocoon (1985, with Greg Cannom, Kevin Haney, Brian Penikas, and Michael Burnett), Fright Night (1985, with Dale Brady), and Moonwalker (1988, with Bob Smithson).

In 1988 Stratton began a collaboration with Eric Allard's "All Effects Company" and shortly thereafter founded his "Creative Make-up Effects" company. Stratton worked as make-up supervisor on the television pilot of Alien Nation in 1989, followed by twenty-two episodes for which he served as special effects make-up artist. On this series, which starred Gary Graham, Eric Pierpoint, Michele Scarabelli, and Ron Fassler, he worked with fellow Trek artists Steve LaPorte, R. Christopher Biggs, Richard Howard, Richard Snell, Katalin Elek, Ellis Burman, Edouard F. Henriques, and Burt Dalton. In 1990, the make-up crew won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Achievement in Makeup for a Series for the episode "Chains of Love".

Following the successful series, five television movies based on the TV show were produced in the '90s: Alien Nation: Dark Horizon (1994), Alien Nation: Body and Soul (1995), Alien Nation: Millennium (1996), Alien Nation: The Enemy Within (1996), and Alien Nation: The Udara Legacy (1997). Stratton, who worked on all five was also part of the teams who earned Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Makeup for a Miniseries or a Special for Dark Horizon (along with Edouard F. Henriques, Craig Reardon, Zoltan Elek, Janna Phillips, and Richard Snell), Body and Soul (along with Richard Snell, Craig Reardon, Steve LaPorte, Janna Phillips, David Abbott, Ken Myers, and Jill Rockow), and The Enemy Within (along with Richard Snell, Craig Reardon, Janna Phillips, David Abbott, Edouard F. Henriques, Karen Westerfield, and Ken Myers).

Beside his work on Alien Nation, Stratton worked on the cyborg teachers in Class of 1999 (1990, on which he worked with Barney Burman, Rob Burman, Rolf John Keppler, and Dave Quashnick), Edward Scissorhands (1990, with Ve Neill, Kim Santantonio, Yolanda Toussieng, Brad Wilder, and Steve LaPorte), The Addams Family (1991), Sleepwalkers (1992), Bram Stoker's Dracula (1992, along with Greg Cannom, Gilbert A. Mosko, Josée Normand, and Joel Harlow), Coneheads (1993), as make-up artist for Martin Landau on Ed Wood (1994), ER (1994-1995), Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997), Armageddon (1998, along with Yolanda Toussieng, Edouard F. Henriques, and Lee Ann Brittenham), Wild Wild West (1998) and Galaxy Quest (1999).

Further Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Makeup include his work on the Murphy Brown episode One (1993), on the television movie In Search of Dr. Seuss (1995), on Trilogy of Terror II (1997), and on the Angel episode The Ring (2000), which he shared with Robert Maverick, Earl Ellis, Toby Lamm, Jill Rockow, Steve LaPorte, David DeLeon, and Dayne Johnson. In 1999, Stratton was part of the makeup team which won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Makeup for a Series for The X-Files episodes "Two Fathers" and "One Son". Fellow Trek artists Mark Shostrom, Jake Garber, Craig Reardon, Steve LaPorte, Perri Sorel, and Kevin Haney shared this award.

Further credits as special effects makeup artist include How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), The Time Machine (2002), Windtalkers (2002), The Matrix Reloaded (2003), War of the Worlds (2005), and Cold Case and Charmed (1996-2006).

Since 2004, Stratton has specialized in creating his own "Strat-Tatts", temporary tattoos for makeup effects, which were used on productions such as the war drama Jarheads (2005), Smokin' Aces (2006), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), NCIS (2006), Day Break (2007), CSI: New York (2007), Women's Murder Club (2007), and Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (2008),Street Kings (2008), Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), Max Payne (2008), Watchmen (2009), Crazy on the Outside (2010) and My Own Love Song (2009), the horror film Legion (2010), and the action film The Expendables (2010).

Star Trek work[]

External links[]

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