The Art Of Ron Cobb And The Legacy Left Behind

During Comic-con week, Macabre Daily had the great honor of attending a unique opportunity to explore the work of legendary conceptual artist and cinema genius Ron Cobb.

This methodical and brilliant panel was created by Titan Books and moderated by concept art Association co-founders Rachel Meinerding and Nichol Hendrix. The panel was joined by other movie alumni that previously worked with Ron. Bill Stout, Michael Backus, Nick Castle, Mitch Suskin, and Jacob Johnson were all present to share their unique stories about the legendary man and discuss the influential footprint left behind by indisputably the world's greatest concept artist.

For those who may not know, the late Ron Cobb passed away in 2020 at the age of 83 from an illness known as Lewy Body Dementia. Not a whole lot is known about the disease, other than It's a special unique form of dementia, it's hard to diagnose, hard to treat and over a million Americans suffer from it every year.

Ron Cobb was a futurist and concept designer that left behind a slew of influential marquees in pop culture history. We, as sci-fi fans, undoubtedly look at Ron Cobb's work as an essential remembrance of our favorite movies.

Cobb brought extraordinary possibilities to the world of science fiction and fantasy, from concept art, to set design, wardrobe, creature design, and even designing insignias for films such as Conan The Barbarian.

His cartoons from the sixties and seventies are collected in several out-of-print books: RCD-25 (1967) and Mah Fellow Americans (1968) were published by Sawyer Press. Raw Sewage and My Fellow Americans (1971) were published by Price Stern and Sloan.

After he moved to Sydney in 1972, with the independent publishers Wild and Woolley he published a "best of" the earlier cartoon books titled The Cobb Book in 1974. This was followed in 1976 by Cobb Again.

A large format collection in full color was published in 1981 titled Colorvision. This book included much of his design work for the films Star Wars, Alien, and Conan the Barbarian. Conan was the first feature for which he received the credit Production Designer.

In the last two decades, Ron Cobb has contributed production design to the films: The Last Starfighter, the aforementioned Conan the Barbarian, and Leviathan.

He also contributed conceptual designs to other feature films, including Dark Star, Alien, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Real Genius, Back to the Future, Aliens, The Abyss, Total Recall, and True Lies, The 6th Day, Cats and Dogs, Firefly and Southland Tales.

Ron directed the Australian comedy Garbo and contributed the initial story for Night Skies, an earlier, darker version of ET. He also co-wrote with Robin Love, one of the new Twilight Zone episodes. - Roncobb.net

To preserve and honor this man's legacy, the Cobb family teamed up with Titan Books, to bring you the ultimate collection of Ron Cobb’s artwork from across his entire career in a comprehensive coffee table book. Written by Jason Johnson, whose work resume is almost as impressive as Ron's. Jacob Johnston worked on various projects for Marvel. He was the visual development coordinator/producer on Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, 10 episodes of Daredevil, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man, 12 episodes of Jessica Jones, Captain America: Civil War, Doctor Strange, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, Spider-Man: Homecoming, Thor: Ragnarok and Avengers: Infinity War. The book is out to release on September 13th of this year.

Description:

During his sixty-year career, Ron Cobb provided concept art for some of the biggest films in sci-fi cinema. From designing spaceships for Alien, Dark Star, and Firefly and Delorean from Back to the Future to character designs for Conan the Barbarian and creature concepts for Star Wars and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Ron has left a legacy of artwork behind to inspire future gene, rations of concept artists.

This beautiful coffee table book is full to the brim with Ron Cobb’s artwork from throughout his career and includes exclusive insights from the talent he worked with along the way, including James Cameron, Joe Johnston, Robert Zemeckis, Bob Gaand le and Nick Castle.

Brought to you by Concept Art Association in collaboration with the Estate of Ron Cobb. -Titanbooks.com

We'd like to thank the Cobb family, Jacob Johnson and Titan Books for making this book, and allowing the younger generation and new audiences a glimpse into these wonderful films. Hopefully this will lead others to seek out and find more of Ron's contributions to the popular arts and culture.