At the Closing Plenary on Wednesday at the 2018 Joint Annual Meeting of the Entomological Societies of America, Canada, and British Columbia, graphic artist Ryan Church shared his journey from a youthful fascination with insects to a career in movie design.

Viewed up close, many insects evoke in human minds a sense of something alien. Their fantastic forms and colors often look like something straight out of a monster movie or space-odyssey epic.

But, really, it’s the other way around. Some insects look like science-fiction stars precisely because the creative minds behind popular entertainment look to insects to spark their imagination.

At the Closing Plenary on Wednesday at the Joint Annual Meeting of the Entomological Societies of America, Canada, and British Columbia, graphic artist Ryan Church shared his journey from a youthful fascination with insects to a career in movie design. Church, a concept design supervisor at LucasFilm, has worked on numerous Star Wars movies as well as other science fiction blockbusters such as Star Trek, Avatar, and War of the Worlds.

Church‘s visions have typically been applied early in the creative process for these movies, taking scripts that live as mostly words on a page and developing sketches and full designs for elements such as characters, space ships, and environments. Even when these aren’t meant to be explicitly insect-like, Church says he finds inspiration in the incredible features of insects.

And, despite the wealth of insect macrophotography available online today, Church says he still turns to books he discovered in his younger years for inspiration, including Moths and How to Rear Them, by Paul Villiard, and Insects of the World, by Walter Linsenmaier.

Words, of course, can’t do much justice to the beautiful designs and imagery Church shared in his presentation, so below we’ll share highlights captured by attendees on Twitter to illustrate the connections Church makes between the natural and fictional world.

See the similarities? Insects as inspiration for #StarWars #EntSoc18 #JAM18 #EntSoc2018 pic.twitter.com/6IoVcOQdmY

— Dr. Tamra Reall 🐞🌸🐝 (@bug_gal) November 14, 2018

Totally nerding out. Listening to Ryan Church give the closing plenary. He is a #Hollywood concept artist that has worked on #StarWars, #StarWars, and #Marvel movies. As an amateur #entomologist, he draws inspiration from insects for many of his projects. #EntSoc18 #JAM18 pic.twitter.com/KbunbXN0xo

— Erika Machtinger (@MachtingerLab) November 14, 2018

Termite inspiration #EntSoc18 #JAM18 ⁦@eusocialmeg⁩ pic.twitter.com/Eggz9WApTp

— Dr. Jessica L Ware Lab 🏳️‍🌈🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@JessicaLWareLab) November 14, 2018

Horrific scenes can have a beauty and grace to them — Ryan Church using insects as #inspiration #EntSoc18 #JAM18 #EntSoc2018 pic.twitter.com/pSB7DqFftg

— Dr. Tamra Reall 🐞🌸🐝 (@bug_gal) November 14, 2018

If you suspected a lot of sci-fi has entomological roots, it’s true! Designer/artist Ryan Church, closing plenary speaker, uses insects as inspiration for movies such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Avatar, John Carter of Mars. #JAM18 #EntSoc18 #UFBugs pic.twitter.com/SvfXNTkYAO

— UF/IFAS PMU (@PMU_News) November 14, 2018

More insect inspired creatures and ships #EntSoc18 #JAM18 #EntSoc2018 pic.twitter.com/yChGHV9tzt

— Dr. Tamra Reall 🐞🌸🐝 (@bug_gal) November 14, 2018

Learn more about Chuch’s work at www.ryanchurch.com. And be sure to follow along with the rest of the Joint Annual Meeting via Twitter at #EntSoc18 and #JAM18.