Artist and illustrator Frank Kelly Freas who earned 11 Hugo awards for his imaginative science fiction illustrations has died. He was 84.

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His wife, Laura, told the Los Angeles Times he died Sunday in his sleep of natural causes.

One of Freas' most durable illustrations has been a 1953 Astounding Science Fiction magazine cover for Tom Godwin's science fiction short story "The Gulf Between," depicting a giant robot holding a dead man in the palm of its hand.

Another of his legacies was adding the refining features of Mad magazine's gap-toothed character, Alfred E. Newman, who was created by Norman Mingo and based on a smiling dunce popular in 19th century advertisements. Newman was frequently drawn by Freas when he worked as Mad magazine's cover artist from 1955 through 1962.

Freas also designed astronauts' crew patches and posters for NASA, and his works were exhibited in the Smithsonian Institution and New York's American Museum of Natural History.

He began his professional career painting realistic internal organs for biomedical textbooks.

He is survived by his wife of 16 years, Laura Brodian Freas; a daughter, Jacqueline; a son, Jeremy; and six grandsons.