General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsRIP artist and illustrator Ron Cobb (counterculture cartoons, famous movie designs, and more)
Last edited Tue Sep 22, 2020, 10:01 AM - Edit history (1)
Ron Cobb died Monday (Sept. 21, 2020) his birthday of Lewy body dementia in Sydney, his wife of 48 years, Robin Love, reported.
Cobb brought to life several cantina creatures for Star Wars (1977) and came up with weaponry and sets for Conan the Barbarian (1982), the exterior and interior of the Nostromo ship in Alien (1978) and the earth colony complex in Aliens (1986) and the DeLorean time machine in Back to the Future (1985).
He became a celebrated editorial cartoonist for underground newspapers after submitting cartoons to the Los Angeles Free Press, which in the 1960s was operating out of the basement of the Fifth Estate coffee house on the Sunset Strip.
His counterculture work was syndicated in more than 80 newspapers across America, Europe, Asia and Australia.
Above is perhaps Rons most famous cartoon for The Free Press.
Below is a creation of his recognized around the world.
And a few things from his filmography you may recognize
Full gallery at http://roncobb.net/index.html
Edited to add a little more detail to the Subject line
Mike 03
(16,616 posts)I wonder how he became involved with Dark Star, directed by John Carpenter. That film is legendary at USC Cinema School. I don't know if it's true, but I was told that Carpenter was kicked out of USC for stealing a camera from the stock room and pawning it for money to complete the film. But that is not mentioned in the Wikipedia article. Maybe it's apocryphal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Star_(film)
What I'm really interested in is how they met. Oh well.. If Cobb worked on Alien he may also have worked with (or met) another legend, Syd Mead, who was also a concept artist--or, technically, a futurist.
You can tell James Cameron really liked him because he worked on Aliens, The Abyss and True Lies. What a career!