Ron Cobb, the Artist Behind STAR WARS, ALIEN, and BACK TO THE FUTURE, Has Died at 83

Rob Cobb Has Died at 83

Ron Cobb, production artist behind Star Wars, Alien, and Back to the Future succumbed to dementia Monday at the age of 83.

Cobb died on his birthday — his wife of 48 years, Robin Love, reported — after an illustrious career contributing to production design in many Hollywood films. He worked as a consultant for Back to the Future, providing the initial designs for its famous time traveling DeLorean and iconic alien species in the Star Wars universe, such as the Gotals and Ithorians from the Mos Eisley Cantina scene. Cobb was also a prolific designer of fictional aircraft such as the Alien‘s Nostromo and the Nazi warplane from Raiders of the Lost Ark. He contributed to the exterior look of the Weyland-Yutani Nostromo ship while also designing its interior sets to bring the vision to life on screen.

Cobb’s artistic career began in 1956, the year after he graduated from Burbank High School. He worked at Walt Disney Studios as a cell animator and breakdown artist on Sleeping Beauty. He later worked on special effects for the atmospheric sci-fi movie Dark Star and served as a production designer on Conan the Barbarian, where he created the movie’s iconic armor, weapon, and set designs. Cobb had also contributed to Total Recall, The Last Starfighter and Leviathan.

In 1982, he was tapped to direct Night Skies, a proposed sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind. However, the project eventually got scrapped with some of the material being recycled in Steven Spielberg’s E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. His directorial debut came in 1992 with an Australian comedy film called Garbo, which follows two incompetent Australian garbage collectors.

He has writing credits for the Shelter Skelter episode of The Twilight Zone and helped write the script for Loadstar, an MS-DOS PC game in 1994. Four collections of Cobb’s political cartoons from the 1960s and 1970s have also been published as books.

Cobb is survived by his wife and son, Robin and Nicky Cobb.

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