Artist Moebius died 10 March 2012, apparently after a long battle with cancer. Born Jean Henri Gaston Giraud in a suburb of Paris, France, on 8 May 1938, he was known internationally for his work in films, comics, books, and more.
He had only a year or so of technical training, at the Arts Appliqués art school, but was working full time as an artist while he was still a teenager. At the age of 18, he was drawing his own comic strip, Frank et Jeremie, for the magazine Far West. His most famous, Blueberry, debuted in 1963 (with Giraud providing the art and Jean-Michel Charlier handling the writing duties).
He created his Moebius pseudonym for his science fiction and fantasy work in 1963. It debuted in a satire magazine called Hara-Kiri, for which he drew a score of strips over two years. He didn’t pick up that name again until 1975, when he was one of the founders of the comics art group “Les Humanoides Associes”, along with Jean-Pierre Dionnet, Philippe Druillet, and Bernard Farkas. They started the magazine Métal Hurlant which came to the English-speaking world as Heavy Metal.
In the film world, he contributed storyboards and concept designs to movies including Alien (1979), Time Masters (1982), Tron (1982), Masters of the Universe (1987), Willow (1988), Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989), The Abyss (1989), Space Jam (1996), The Fifth Element (1997), and more. He also provided uncredited work for the 1981 film Heavy Metal.
His work garnered numerous awards, including Harveys, Eisners, several European awards, and the 1997 World Fantasy Award.