News

Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Paul Conrad has passed away at the age of 86. The illustrator died from natural causes at his home in Rancho Palos Verdes, Los Angeles on Saturday, September 4, his son David has confirmed.

Conrad became famed for poking fun at U.S. presidents including Harry S. Truman, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and his funny drawings even landed him on former leader Richard Nixon's list of enemies.

He spent the last three decades working at the Los Angeles Times and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize a total of three times throughout his 50-year career. He is survived by his wife of more than six decades, Kay, and their two sons and two daughters.

Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Paul Conrad has passed away at the age of 86.

The illustrator died from natural causes at his home in Rancho Palos Verdes, Los Angeles on Saturday, his son David has confirmed.

Conrad became famed for poking fun at U.S. presidents including Harry S. Truman, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and his funny drawings even landed him on former leader Richard Nixon's list of enemies.

He spent the last three decades working at the Los Angeles Times and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize a total of three times throughout his 50-year career.

He is survived by his wife of more than six decades, Kay, and their two sons and two daughters.

Now that Pixar's Up has officially landed on DVD and Blu-ray, artist Paul Conrad has posted a bunch of the concept art from the film that he worked on, like the above image (which I pieced together) that includes the original digital photo that inspired "Paradise Falls" alongside the faux magazine article that Ellie first thumb-tacks in their living room. Some interesting tidbits we learn from Conrad's blog:

According to one image, Paradise Falls was at one point called Angel Falls. Initially, 185 Wilderness Explorer Merit Badges were created for Russell, though they only used 47 in the film (see all 185 over at Conrad's site). The bird's name was originally Gary, and then later changed to Kevin. Additionally, several soda cap badges were also created eventually leading to the single Grape Soda cap that young Ellie pins on young Carl (see all the soda cap designs over at Conrad's site). There's also...

Correction: Apparently Eric Tan did not create all these posters, I was wrong in that assumption. He created "Journey into the Wild" (with the dogs), Craig Foster did the Saa South American Air (with the Lama), Erik Evans did the "Paradise Falls" (with the bird), and Paul Conrad did the five remaining posters. To celebrate the November 10th DVD & Blu-ray Combo pack release of Pixar’s Up, Disney has released high resolution copies of Eric Tan's awesome retro posters which were created during the development of the film for inspiration, and were hung in Pixar Animation Studios during production. We've featured many of artist Eric Tan's creations in past Cool Stuff columns: we've spotlighted his work for past Pixar productions, X-Men, Lost , among other things. Tan has been creating a series of posters for the Indiana Jones film series. You can see his Raiders of the Lost Ark and Temple...