David J. Negron Sr., a conceptual painter, illustrator and storyboard artist with credits including Indiana Jones, Ghostbusters and Jurassic Park, died peacefully in his sleep on October 12, his family tells Deadline. He was 85.
“He was an inspiration to the Motion Picture community and the fine arts world,” the Negron family said in a statement. “We have lost a loving father, grandfather and a beautiful soul.”
Negron embarked on his career as a conceptual painter in the mid-1960s, going on to collaborate with Steven Spielberg on Indiana Jones and the Raiders of The Lost Ark and Jurassic Park, visualizing iconic scenes including the Giant Boulder chase for the former, along with various dinosaur environments for the latter. He also painted iconic images for Ridley Scott’s dystopian sci-fi classic, Blade Runner, based on Philip K. Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?.
Other notable projects Negron was involved with include David Zucker’s Ghost, Amblin’s Gremlins, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Midnight Run, The Jewel Of the Nile, Back to the Future Part III, Ace Ventura, Last Action Hero, Out of Time, and When Nature Calls.
While at 20th Century Fox, he worked on such tentpole projects as Hello, Dolly! and Tora! Tora! Tora!. Shortly after his time at that studio, he moved over to Walt Disney Studios, illustrating for movies and creating posters for Escape to Witch Mountain and 1971 Michael Caine film, Kidnapped.
While at Disney, Negron was assigned to Walter Elias Disney Enterprises, the Amusement Park Development Company now known as Disney Imagineering, where he created conceptual paintings for rides and attractions at Disneyland and Disney World, including the Epcot Center and Space Mountain. He also painted a three-panel mural based on turn-of the-century scenes that appears inside The Plaza Inn café at Disneyland and Disneyland Paris.
The artist born in in Del Rio, Texas on Dec. 24, 1935 was inducted into the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in 1997.
He is survived by his daughters, Cynthia and Laura; his sons, David, Jr., Joel & Lawrence; 18 grandchildren and 21 great-grandchildren.
Plans for a memorial have not yet been disclosed.
