Ron Cobb was a multifaceted artist, writer, film conceptual designer, and cartoonist born in 1937 in Los Angeles, California.
He began his career in the mid-1950s as an inbetweener/breakdown artist on the classic Walt Disney animated feature "Sleeping Beauty".
In 1960, Cobb was drafted into the U.S. Army and served in the Signal Corps during the Vietnam war in 1963.
Following his tour of duty, he became a political cartoonist for the L.A. Free Press, a role he held from 1965 to 1970.
In 1969, Cobb designed the international symbol for Ecology.
He designed the cover for the Jefferson Airplane album "After Bathing at Baxter's".
In 1972, Cobb moved to Sydney, Australia.
His first film assignment was designing the spaceship exterior for John Carpenter's science fiction cult comedy "Dark Star".
Ron was the production designer on the movies "Conan the Barbarian", "The Last Starfighter", and "Leviathan".
Among the films Cobb made conceptual contributions to are "Star Wars", "Alien", "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Close Encounters of the Third Kind: The Special Edition", "Back to the Future", "Real Genius", "Aliens", "The Abyss", "Total Recall", "True Lies", "Space Truckers", "The Sixth Day", "Titan A.E.", and "Southland Tales".
Moreover, Ron designed the opening credits sequence for the anthology TV series "Amazing Stories" and wrote the "Shelter Skelter" episode of the mid-1980s revival of "The Twilight Zone".
In addition, Cobb originated the story for "Night Skies", a darker earlier version of "E.T." which alas never got made.
He directed the comedy "Garbo" in 1990.
Outside of his film and television work, Ron did designs and wrote scenarios for several video games.
His illustrations were published in the books "RCD-25", "Mah Fellow Americans", "Raw Sewage", "The Cobb Book", "Cobb Again", and "Colorvision".
Cobb lived in Sydney, Australia with his wife Robin Love and son Nicky.
He died at age 83 from Lewy body dementia on September 21, 2020.
