RIP artist and illustrator Ron Cobb (counterculture cartoons, famous movie designs, and more)

[Mike 03]

1. Wow, he worked on some major films

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, True Lies, The 6th Day, Cats and Dogs, Firefly and Southland Tales.

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:

The film began as a 45-minute 16mm student project with a final budget of six thousand dollars.[14][15] Beginning with an initial budget of one thousand dollars from USC in 1970,[16] Carpenter and O'Bannon completed the first version of the film in 1972.[7] Carpenter had to replace the voice of Pahich with his own as Talby.[15] To achieve theatrical length, an additional fifty minutes were filmed with the support of Canadian distributor Jack Murphy (credited as "Production Associate&quot .[7][17] Through John Landis, a friend of O'Bannon, the film came to the attention of producer-distributor Jack H. Harris, who obtained the theatrical distribution rights to the film, and insisted on extensive cuts to the existing film as well as the shooting of additional 35mm footage to bring the movie back up to feature film length[18][10] O'Bannon would later lament that as a result of the padding into a feature-length movie, "We had what would have been the world’s most impressive student film and it became the world’s least impressive professional film".[19]

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!