Charles Ratteray

Charles Ratteray
[[File:|200px|Charles Ratteray]]
{{{credit}}}
Portrays:
Date of Birth:
Date of Death:	Missing required parameter 1=month! ,
Nationality:	USA
Related Media
		@ BW Media
Official Site
IMDb profile

Charles Ratteray is an American concept artist, storyboard artist, and illustrator who served as a conceptual designer on the Re-imagined Series. Based in Los Angeles, Ratteray has worked in the entertainment industry for over 25 years, contributing to numerous high-profile television series and films.

Career

Early career

Ratteray studied art in Philadelphia before relocating to Los Angeles for an internship in special effects at the Academy Award-winning Stan Winston Studio. His performance during the internship led to a permanent position at the practical effects studio, where he focused primarily on character design.

Ratteray subsequently expanded his skill set beyond character design to include storytelling and other aspects of design and filmmaking techniques. He became associated with Famous Frames, one of the largest storyboard agencies in the Los Angeles and New York metropolitan areas, and has collaborated with directors including Spike Lee, David Fincher, David Twohy, Ivan Reitman, Patrick Tatopoulos, and F. Gary Gray.

Television and film work

Ratteray's television credits include Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and CSI. His film work includes serving as a storyboard artist on Captain America: The First Avenger (2011), Blue Eye Samurai (2023), and Deadpool & Wolverine (2024).

Ratteray's artistic style is characterized by dynamic lines and designs that blend anime and realistic influences. He continues to work as a storyboard artist, concept designer and illustrator for major entertainment companies including Marvel, Netflix, Riot Games, and Disney.

Battlestar Galactica contributions

Ratteray served as a conceptual designer at Zoic Studios during the production of the Re-imagined Series, working under visual effects supervisor Gary Hutzel. His most significant contribution to the series was his work on the Cylon Raider design.

According to production illustrator Eric Chu, who created the initial Cylon Raider concepts, Ratteray's intervention proved crucial to the final design. Chu stated that while his early designs "had the same basic elements: a central fuselage — which was required by an earlier version of the miniseries' script — a face, and a general disc shape, which I kept from the original Raider," the distinctive profile emerged later. "It wasn't until Charles Ratteray at Zoic took a crack at the design that the scimitar shape came into existence. I liked the basic shape of that and did a final pass to smooth the lines and give it a more organic feeling, which tied it in with the rest of the Cylon designs."

The Cylon Raider's scimitar profile became a defining visual element of the Re-imagined Series, representing the bio-mechanical aesthetic that characterized the evolved Cylon technology. This design departed significantly from the original 1978 series while maintaining thematic consistency with the organic nature of Cylon evolution depicted throughout the show.

Teaching

Ratteray serves as an instructor at the Gnomon School of Visual Effects, where he teaches courses to aspiring visual effects artists and designers.

References