Ron Cobb, the cartoonist turned production designer who was responsible for Momaw Nadon in A New Hope, and designs in numerous other films including Alien and Back to the Future, has passed away at the age of 83 on his birthday, September 21st.
Cobb brought to life several cantina creatures for Star Wars (1977) and came up with weaponry and sets for Conan the Barbarian (1982), the exterior and interior of the Nostromo ship in Alien (1978) and the earth colony complex in Aliens (1986) and the DeLorean time machine in Back to the Future (1985).
His prolific design work also included the breathing tanks and helmets in The Abyss (1989), the Omega Sector logo and the H bombs in True Lies (1990), the interior of the Mothership and the stranded tanker in Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and the vehicles of The Last Starfighter (1984).
It was while working as a production designer on John Milius’ Conan the Barbarian that Cobb first met Steven Spielberg, who was working down the hallway at Universal on Raiders of the Lost Ark.
“I would suggest [to Spielberg] angles, ideas, verbalize the act of directing — ‘Let’s do this and do that, and we could shoot over his shoulder and then a close-up of the shadow,’ ” Cobb told the Los Angeles Times in 1988.
So impressed was Spielberg that he suggested Cobb direct his future film Night Skies, a retelling of an infamous 1955 incident in Kentucky in which a family claimed to have had an encounter with five aliens at their farmhouse.
When the family threatened to sue to stop the making of the movie, Cobb offered to write a comparable idea, and the last scene of his story was to show an alien that is marooned on Earth.
This tribute was posted on the Star Wars twitter account, and Mark Hamill also paid tribute: –
We were saddened to learn of the passing of conceptual designer Ron Cobb, who designed one of the most memorable characters in the Mos Eisley cantina, Momaw Nadon. He also contributed to E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Alien, Back to the Future, and many more. He will be missed. pic.twitter.com/TP9RckDiI6
— Star Wars (@starwars) September 22, 2020
The team here send our condolences to his family and friends.
