After "Zero Dark Thirty"

leading from

Film Scenario Explorations

a) Having watched the movie, Zero Dark Thirty, I found the night viewing goggles worn by the Navy SEALs very inspiring enough for me to want to re-imagine the Aliens movie as if it were updated to deal with the trauma of the 9/11 event rather than Vietnam and maybe this is also inspired by the story about the hunt for Bin Laden leading up to the Navy SEALs raid on the compound using using Stealth helicopters. The film was directed by Kathryn Bigalow who was actually married to James Cameron, and her film Hurt Locker despite the fact it didn't contain aliens or alien hives or alien queens, it had been compared to Jim Cameron's Aliens.

b) Indeed some futuristic scenario would involve the dropships as seen in Aliens but designed to look a little like Stealth fighters. Ultimately the compound becomes a place infested with an alien presence in one form or another.  But the goggles worn by the Navy SEALS are the greater point of inspiration, making them seem to be partially biomechanoids themselves. 

c) Thinking about an initial idea for transforming the plot of this Zero Dark Thirty movie by way or Prometheus rather than Aliens. They are trying to locate the enemy who has unleashed a vicious terrorist campaign on the human race, and they get nowhere locating their enemy until they discover that they already found the information a long time ago and head there in their space craft. They encounter the compound and they discover the whereabouts or who they are after and kill it, they bring the body back to their base but they wont actually know if they have killed the being that they are after until they get back to base and have it formally identified, but no one actually knows who or what they are after.

d) The value of anything in this story is completely blurred but the soldiers are seen to do their job and make their kill while the rest of the people appear to be satisfied with the claims of what has been accomplished. Bringing something of the body back home as evidence might just be another one of the tactics of this strange civilisation.

e) I don't actually have any ideas about introducing the alien life form as we know it into this story, but I tend to think about the alien life form being present in the human DNA since the dawn of the human race waiting to be reactivated with the right technology and so the hosts become manipulated into becoming human bombs.

Stealth Helicopter hanging from a crane during the film shoot.
Someone could turn this into a dropship

f) So the associations that I am having are astronauts with night vision goggles hunting a Bin Laden-esque Engineer/Space Jockey, and perhaps he is able to shed off his outer skin very easily. A long ship with hundreds of people aboard in a state of hibernation have been infected in some unexplainable way, (as unexplained as how the alien egg turned up aboard the Sulaco in the beginning of Alien 3) and streams of alien come out to attack the astronauts soldiers.

Giger's Samurai. The corpse of the space Jockey that
would be my long dead villain

g) In my minds eye the aliens are forming columns extending from the ship as if they are ants forming bridges, This might be somehow a reflection 9/11 event with the thousands of people perishing and many jumping out through the window. I don't want to be bothered to think about it in light of World War Z in the way that the zombies formed towers in the manner of ants because I don't have much to say about that movie. When the aliens find something else to land on nearby, they form balls that are projected like missiles through space and then reach their target, ships to invade. It's a reason to find the source.

Ender's Alien

leading from

film scenario explorations

a) I went to see the film Gavin Hood's Ender's Game which featured battle games in a zero gravity environment since it was about children training to aboard a space station through very difficult combat to be able to combat a threatening alien presence.

b) In Enders Game, I was inspired to see the group of children in the zero gravity environment all connecting together into a human missile to get them from one side of the zero gravity game environment. I have seen Giger paintings featuring biomechanoid landscapes featuring what look like life forms fused or connected together and this inspires me greatly.  And the idea of aliens all connected together in a similar way inspires me as well. (See also : Drawing aliens After Ender's Game and Gravity)

Biomechanoid Landscape work 312

Gravity - Gravitalien - Alien

leading from

Film Scenario Explorations

a) When Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity came out, already because of the poster I started to imagine chains of aliens connecting together streaming through the poster as if they were travelling around on an invisible roller coaster. See Gravitalien Poster

b) During the time I watched the movie Gravity at the cinema, which starred Sandra Bullock and George Clooney, I had reveries about aliens throwing themselves through space in the manner of  Russian satellite wreckage and landing on the different space crafts and space stations before swarming the vessel. There was also the question about what these vessels might have become on closer exploration.

c) When Sandra Bullock's character got into the Russian space station, and there were sparks and flames spreading around the construction,  I thought about these being the alien creature, hiding in a cabinet in place of where small flames were coming out from being discharged into the air, and then the rest beginning to chase Sandra's character through the interior and then she shuts them out with an impenetrable doorway before she leaves via a capsule. I continued to imagine the aliens floating around in the darkness waiting to grab onto the next vessel and the next person floating in space.

The late J G Ballard

d) Tombs in space from JG Ballard "Memory of the Space Age"
Seeing the space shuttle in the depths of space and later a floating wreck containing dead bodies made me think of the odd tomb like nature of the place, and later Sandra Bullock's character was just about to give up and die in her space capsule making that place become her tomb. I was also very inspired by the writer J G Ballard's idea of dead astronauts killed in accidents in outerspace and their rocket capsules becoming orbiting coffins such as in his story Memory of the Space Age. This was the author who was approached to write the novelisation of Alien and refused since he wasn't interested in the script but was actually quite inspired by what Ridley had done with the script. I had also been thinking about tombs out in space with giant aliens sealed inside. My interests had been brought to surface in 2013 movie Gravity where the space shuttle is transformed into a spinning tomb with its dead astronauts trapped in the cockpit.

e) Tombs in space transforming into Pakal Votan tomb lids  into Mayan rocketmen
I had started to think again about remains of giant ancient alien astronauts stuck out in space and began returning to the concept of the ancient Mayan rocket man as perceived in the Pakal Votan Tomb lid. Later I was able to discover that HR Giger had been inspired for at least a couple of paintings by the Pakal Votan tomb lid.  (See also: Pakal Votan Tomb lid)

Pakal Votan Tomb lid

f) There have been fantastic tales about the possibility of pre-ancient space vehicle wreckage in the outer orbits of space with no serious scientific basis given for it but it caught the imagination as with many mysteries. I thought about how in Prometheus the Mayan Space Jockey based on the Pakal Votan tomb lid that had become known as the Mayan Rocket Man because of it's a likeness to an astronaut in a space capsule.  So the two astronauts from Gravity are travelling through space as they did together to get to the Space Shuttle and later the Russian space station. I am imagining though a Lanard's Space Rocket capsule toy for 3 3/4 scale figures with the side opening up with double doors to reveal the cockpit inside and this has been roughly converted into a Mayan rocket capsule and here we find the giant skeleton of the space jockey. The aliens appear to be floating through space from one thing to another almost like some sort of sea creatures because I can not be bothered to think about the dangers that aliens must presently present. (See also: drawing aliens after Gravity)

http://www.jomitoys.com/2010/02/star-force-1998-space-capsule.html

g) The revery continues that if Ridley had thought about making a Prometheus sequel by taking some sort of a film joke from the previous movie as the basis for the next one as had often been done with the Alien movies, maybe the Mayan Space Jockey would be the next point of discussion. However I would have like a rocket capsule for the Mayan Space Jockey that would be like something that came from a Giger painting just as the derelict ship in Alien was.

Space jockey and chair carried around in the manner of a Sokar Funerary Barque

See Evolution of Space Jockey via the Egyptian Book of the Dead at the AlienExplorations blog
Also see: Rough concept for biomechanisation of The Sokar Funerary Bark relief

Study for a Space Jockey as a tall humanoid

study for a Space Jockey (detail)

study for a Space Jockey (detail)

 

Space Jockey's with Sommelier knife/ Waiters Friend bodies

See Space-jockeys-with-sommelier-knife bodies for an explanation behind these body structures at the Alien Explorations blog

And see Space Jockey's with Sommelier knife/ Waiters Friend bodies 2 for more images

Space Jockeys with Sommelier Knife bodies

Space Jockeys with Sommelier Knife body

Space Jockey with Sommelier Knife body

Space Jockey with Sommelier Knife body

Predalien Predalien to the extreme II

Predaien

Predalien

Predalien

Predalien with dreadlock spines transformed into mandibles

Predalien with head divided at the back

Predalien with head divided at the back

Predalien Predalien to the extreme

a) Although, various artists were having ideas about what an Alien that was born from a Predator should look like for some time before the Alien Vs Predator films were made, it wasn't until Alien Vs Predator Requiem that we managed to see near enough an adult one that was supposed to be a young queen. When the film makers of Alien Vs Predator Requiem was made, they coined the term Predalien for such a creature which as a term has stuck. The film makers wanted to pay homage to Texas Chainsaw Massacre with their effort, the jagged heads of the alien warriors were their chainsaw blades and the clicking noises of the Predalien was their slow chainsaw engine.

b) Once the images of the monsters from the movie had been released, already I was very dissatisfied with their alien monsters. So their Predalien was supposed to be a young Alien Queen which alien queen features on its head. The Predator mandibles of the creature resembled spanners either side of it's normal alien mouth.

c) What I did like was the idea that perhaps the aliens were the chainsaws. I wanted to slowly design my own Predalien, perhaps a far more basic one, I admit that I had been undecided about the way the head should look however I imagined it as a weaponised biomechanoid and developed an urge to turn its tail into a chainsaw that would rip through it's victims.

d) Over time I would imagine the dreadlock like tendrils of the creature becoming almost like the legs of a trilobite

e) The creatures body became more and more spikey

 

f) The large lower jaws mandibles of the creature sticking out with sledge runner like blade

g) But it's true that at the end of the day I am not entirely sure what I would the Predalien should look like and indeed I have kept on trying, but realising that beyond these urges to see something that must be the ultimate blend of Predator and Alien genes, we might want to see something that we really might not be so one hundred percent sure about what we saw and maybe would not actually comprehend for many years to come. I thought also about how the original alien had human jaw bones with human teeth extending from its ankles and I also wondered to some extent about the idea of the Predalien's dreadlocks being replaced by a row of lower mandibles. The ideas about extending parts and changing parts of this creature could go on forever and I liked perhaps the idea that the creature might continuously change slightly. I continue drawing these vague sketches without much thought being given to a final piece

 

study for a Predalien made from bits of Giger paintings