“I day dreamed and nurtured my fantasies and to make them more real, I drew.”
—Ron Cobb
Legendary illustrator and film designer/concept artist Ron Cobb passed away earlier this year at the age of 83. Whether working (briefly) as an “in-betweener” for Disney in the 1950s on Sleeping Beauty, drawing hard-hitting editorial cartoons for the Los Angeles Free Press in the 1960s (following a tour of duty in Vietnam), painting covers for Famous Monsters of Filmland, or designing for blockbuster movies like Star Wars, Alien, Aliens, Conan the Barbarian, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Real Genius, Back to the Future, The Abyss, The Rocketeer, The Last Starfighter, Total Recall, and True Lies among many others, Ron created a body of exciting and unforgettable art. I had written a little about Ron on Muddy Colors some years back and thought sharing a trio of interviews with him today would be a nice way to celebrate the life and work of an influential giant.
Great Artist !
May he rest in peace.
I was first introduced to Ron Cobb through the “Book of Alien” in 1979, and I’ve been seriously infatuated with his work ever since.
As an iconographer myself, I wrote an article several years back about the icons he designed for the sets of ALIEN and how they related to the new (at the time) “flat” interface icons of iOS 7.
I felt this was a side of his work that perhaps hadn’t received as much attention as his other work – he was decades ahead of the rest of us with these designs:
https://blog.iconfactory.com/2013/10/ios-7-and-the-iconography-of-alien/
…and now I’m going to settle in and watch these interviews – thanks for putting this together, Arnie!
He was fantastic. Just loved his Conan art way back then. Thanks Arnie!
Great artist and man.