Art of Ron Cobb (2022) – The Ultimate Coffee Table Book

Author: Jacob Johnston

Description: Discover the ultimate collection of Ron Cobb’s artwork from across his entire career (Alien, Star Wars, Back to the Future) in this comprehensive coffee table book. During his sixty-year career, Ron Cobb provided concept art for some of the biggest films in sci-fi cinema.

Great Discovery

I’m not too sure how many people would know the name Ron Cobb, I for one wouldn’t be familiar with the name and would have had to Google it. Now I’m clued in, I can’t help but promote the man, the myth, legend that is Ron Cobb.

People who are still thinking, who is Ron Cobb, let this be the opening line of how much of a big deal this guy is….James Cameron writes the forward to this book. Not sold yet, let’s keep going.

Ron Cobb became a very known figure on the industry through his concept art for some really BIG movies, movies such as Alien, Dark Star, Back To The Future and Conan Barbarian, that’s just a couple of movies from the vast number of projects he has been involved in.

Cobb designed the SpaceShip exterior for John Carpenter’s Dark Star. He designed some of the aliens in Star Wars. Cobb also Contributed to the exterior look of the earthship, Nostromo, while designing many of the spacecraft’s interior sets for the movie Alien. Cobb designed the Nazi flying wing in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Designed Conan’s world, armour, architecture and weapons. Also, uncredited director of additional second unit photography for the hit Schwarzenegger movie, Conan the Barbarian. On Back to the Future, Cobb created the initial design of the De Lorean time machine. In the movie Aliens he created designs for interior/exterior sets and vehicles of the earth colony complex on the alien planet. Designs for the “Drop ship”, the armored personnel carrier and some of the weapons. These are just a few highlights of his extraordinary career.

Cobb contributed the initial story for Night Skies, an earlier, darker version of E.T. Steven Spielberg offered him the opportunity to direct this scarier sequel to Close Encounters of the Third Kind until problems arose over special effects that required a major rewrite. While Cobb was in Spain working on Conan the Barbarian, Spielberg supervised the rewrite into the more personal E.T. and ended up directing it himself. Cobb later received some net profit participation.