Artist, writer, film designer and cartoonist Ron Cobb was born in 1937 in Los Angeles, California. Cobb began his career in the mid 50s as an inbetweener/breakdown artist on the classic Walt Disney animated feature "Sleeping Beauty." Ron was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1960 and served in the Signal Corps during the Vietnam war in 1963. Following his tour of duty Cobb became a political cartoonist for the L.A. Free Press, which lasted from 1965 to 1970. He designed the cover for the Jefferson Airplane album "After Bathing at Baxter's." In 1969 Ron designed the international symbol for Ecology. In 1972 he moved to Sydney, Australia. Cobb's 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" (Cobb also has an uncredited bit part in this particular picture), "The Last Starfighter," and "Leviathon." Among the films Cobb has 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 80s 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 has done designs and written scenarios for several video games. His illustrations have been published in the books "RCD-25," "Mah Fellow Americans," "Raw Sewage," "The Cobb Book," "Cobb Again," and "Colorvision." Ron Cobb still lives in Sydney, Australia with his wife Robin Love and son Nicky.
1994: Co-founded Rocket Science, an innovative computer entertainment firm.Was actually slated to direct _E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982)_ when the name was "Night Skies." However, Steven Spielberg got the script rewritten in a more personal format and chose to direct it himself. Cobb was paid $400,000 at the time of "E.T"'s release.First came to public attention as a political/editorial cartoonist.Designed an ecology symbol similar to the Greek letter theta in 1969 and released it to the public domain. The following year, Look magazine incorporated the symbol into an ecology flag that was eventually used by environmentalists throughout the 1970s and which was associated with Earth Day.
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Exploring the controversial story behind John Carpenter (Halloween & The Thing) and writer Dan O Bannon's (Alien & Return of the Living Dead) from first feature film. From its humble beginnings as a USC student film, to its modern day status as a cult masterpiece. It also offers a rare glimpse inside the creative minds of two USC film students... who would eventually go on to change the way horror films are made.