Ronald Ray "Ron" Cobb was born in Los Angeles but spent most of his life in Sydney.
Early career By the age of 18, with no formal training in graphic illustration, Cobb was working as an animation "
inbetweener" artist for
Disney Studios in
Burbank, California. He progressed to becoming a
breakdown artist on the animation feature
Sleeping Beauty (1959). It was the last Disney film to have
cels inked by hand. After
Sleeping Beauty was completed in 1957, Cobb was laid off by Disney. He spent the next three years in various jobs—mail carrier, assembler in a door factory, sign painter's assistant—until he was drafted into the
United States Army in 1960. For the next two years he delivered classified documents around
San Francisco, then signed up for an extra year to avoid assignment to the infantry. He was sent to Vietnam in 1963 as a draftsman for the
Signal Corps. After his discharge, Cobb began freelancing as an artist, contributing to the
Los Angeles Free Press for the first time in 1965. Edited and published by
Art Kunkin, the
Los Angeles Free Press was one of the first of the underground newspapers of the 1960s, noted for its radical politics. Cobb's editorial/political cartoons were a celebrated feature of the
Freep, and appeared regularly throughout member newspapers of the
Underground Press Syndicate. Although he was regarded as one of the finest political cartoonists of the mid-1960s to early 1970s, Cobb made very little money from the cartoons and was always looking for work elsewhere. His cartoons were featured in the back to the land magazine
Mother Earth News. Among other projects, Cobb designed the cover for
Jefferson Airplane's 1967 album, ''
After Bathing at Baxter's''. In 1969, Cobb designed the Ecology symbol, later incorporated into the
Ecology Flag.
Move to Sydney In 1972, Cobb moved to Sydney, where his work appeared in alternative magazines such as
The Digger. Independent publishers
Wild & Woolley published a "best of" collection of the earlier cartoon books,
The Cobb Book, in 1975. A follow-up volume,
Cobb Again, appeared in 1978. His work made a greater and indelible impact in video gaming because of his art's direct influence on the artists and designers who developed the
Halo: Combat Evolved blockbuster series, itself one of the most influential video games of all time. Cobb also co-wrote with his wife, Robin Love, one of the
Twilight Zone episodes, "
Shelter Skelter" (1987). Cobb's original drawings of the swords are now used, in cinema merchandising, to mass-produce and sell replicas.
Death He died on his 83rd birthday, September 21, 2020, from complications of
Lewy body dementia. ==See also==