Over the course of November, the social outlets for Weta Workshop has been sharing a lot of their work on Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth – which was recently renewed for a second season – including conceptual artwork and behind-the-scenes on-set photography.
First up, we have a number of images of the Xenomorph – nicknamed Steve by the production – performer Cameron Brown suiting up on set, alongside a number of pictures of the crew at Weta working on the suit.
“From the outset, we sought to make this specialty creature suit modular, so that if a glove, leg or arm ripped over the course of eight months of filming the series, we could easily swap them out. To solve this, we went through an engineering process that called on the expertise of many of our teams, including animatronics, design, costume, paint, prosthetics, sculpture and 3D.
Together, our crew carefully calibrated this suit, worn by creature and stunt performer Cameron Brown, ensuring that it moved in sync for stunt work, close-up shots and everything in between. We rigorously developed and tested each component for a high-action script that would see this alien run up walls and fly through the air, building an internal structure that exaggerated Cameron’s form while also sitting tight to it, and refining each part to ensure the suit performed well under pressure — bursting forth to wreak havoc on ordinary mortals and artificially made ones alike.
An incredible amount of sculpting — six weeks in total — went into realising this Xenomorph’s form in clay. With New Zealand creature suit and stunt performer Cameron Brown’s life cast complete, our team began to carefully build and shape this specialty costume for the FX series @AlienEarthFX, created by @NoahHawley.”
Alien: Earth introduced a menagerie of new extra-terrestrial creatures, the first of which to take a kill during the opening episodes was the Tick. Sharing the concept artwork of the creatures by Alex Ries, Weta elaborated on the creature:
“After an extensive creature exploration that began in 2021, four new species were realised in this Alien series: the Tick, the Eye Midge, the Fly, and the Orchid. Pictured here is the Tick, which, much like our earthly arachnid, sucks the blood of its host. Fast and invasive, this gruesome blood bug keeps gorging — and ballooning, until it’s practically dragging itself across the floor.”
The series also introduced the simply named Fly, a creature with an appetitive for metallic or mineral materials that proved to the Lost Boys that they were not indestructible. This concept art is once again the work of Tahiwi Trenor-Hunt.
“Quiet and corrosive, it feeds on non-organic materials by spraying digestive fluid from a cannon-like nozzle. A telescopic proboscis then emerges, ingesting the dissolved metals and silicones. When it’s not liquefying its lunch, this predatory life form builds nests resembling stalactites — a home for itself and its larvae.”
And last, but my no means least, is the favourite fan Eye Midge, easily the star of Alien: Earth’s extra-terrestrial terrors.
“Called the Eye Midge, this alien takes over your eye socket by using cutters inside its tentacles to sever your optic nerve. With these little blades that work like scissors, the eye pops out, the midge makes itself at home and, before you know it, it’s controlling what you do.
It can’t get much worse — except that it can. The Eye Midge uses its tentacles like a chameleon’s tongue to jump up onto your face. Want to remove it? C’est la vie. Tiny barbs make it almost impossible to pull out.”
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I'm hoping that eventually we'll see a return to the Giger world established for both the Alien and the Space Jockey as depicted in 'ALIEN'. I'm not sure we'll ever get it. You don't mess with the main star.
they want to have something that looks like it came from a nightmare.
Those openings feel like something they came up with AFTER designing the beast, and possibly regretting how organic it looked, decided to highlight some of its better features.
i don't "hate" the idea of a more muscular mouth (which is what they went with here). Nor do i hate the idea of a thicker stronger seeming Alien.
but the proportions are off all over the creature.
Also, the concept art was aiming for a chitinous shiny carapace but the final suit just looks like old leather.
Execution was fully off.
Shadows and some KY jelly would really help.
Huh? They look very different. You can even just compare the glimpses of Big Chap we see in Romulus to Scorched - there are huge departures between the two.
Even in the worst of these films, they were always technically impressive and pushing technology and sfx forward. Serviceable just sticks out like a sore thumb, and is not fitting with the history of this franchise. It's called Alien, it kinda the bare minimum that you get the alien itself above serviceable.
The suit in Romulus is better than this but still has wonky proportions.
But it's only meant to be shot in a certain way that hides the wonkier aspects of it. (in tight close ups or medium shots usually).
while the animatronic and cgi design are the "true" Design of the creature and have the better proportions and give more freedom to how the creature can appear in a shot.
in Earth the suit, animatronic and cgi designs all look the same and have the same "man in suit" proportions.
It's the first time that there's been full suit-cg-animatronic continuity in an Alien production and hopefully it'll be the last.