by Tom Silknitter
Production Designer Andrew Probert has established visual styles in film & television as an artist and designer for more than two decades. Always interested in expanding his design experience into a wider range, he also prefers to maintain a special emphasis and focus on unique & innovative solutions.
He attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles during the late '60s, as well as the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in the late '70s. Soon thereafter, he served as a freelance Illustrator & Storyboard Artist in the motion picture industry, providing an assortment of concept sketches, character designs, pre-production illustrations, graphics and storyboards, hand props, sets, robots, creatures, and space craft for Battlestar: Galactica, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Back to the Future.
In the mid-to-late '80s, he served as a Designer & Senior Consulting Illustrator for Paramount Pictures, providing designs of all spacecraft for the first season of the popular series Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as props, aliens, off-world settings, and the series' logo-type.
Over his vast career, he has participated in the design of theme parks, commercial stores, themed restaurants, and location-based entertainment centers. He has also created: 3D computer models & textures for computer renderings & animations, as well as graphic art, illustrations, and storyboards. He currently provides design concepts & renderings to the Al Turner Company, a California-based themed entertainment company.
While fans and viewers of the Back to the Future Trilogy have all seen and enjoyed some of the work he was responsible for, most do not know much about the man behind some of the funniest and most important props seen in these films. In January 2003, Andrew Probert was kind enough to take time out of his busy schedule and speak with BTTF.com's Tom Silknitter at length regarding his experiences on Back to the Future, as well as sharing some of his never-before-seen production artwork...
