Announcing Alien: The Blueprints from Titan Books!

[SM]

Don't know.  I don't have a copy.

[Local Trouble]

Looks like the preview pages on Amazon show us the Nostromo blueprints and I think I can make out two shuttles...

Spoiler

[close]

[SM]

The original Vault blueprints had both shuttles.

[Local Trouble]

Who can we blame for the spelling of Weyland on those blueprints?

[HuDaFuK]

Does it show us a second shuttle on the Nostromo?

The preview images made it look like the Nostromo blueprints were essentially recycled from Alien Vault, in which case it will.

[Xenomrph]

Does it show us a second shuttle on the Nostromo?

Yes.

Does it show us where the Sulaco's EEVs are?

No, which is unfortunate since the Sulaco diagram has a bit of wasted page space by way of the Port/Starboard diagrams of the ship - the Sulaco is identical on both sides, so getting a view of each side felt superfluous.

There is a full page in the section on the EEV that talks about how they mount into the hull and the armatures that deploy them, but I find it really confusing; there isn't anything spatially to show where it's located on the ship, and it's even hard to tell if you're looking at the interior or exterior of the hull - the first pic shows blast plates that are flush with the hull that I assume are blown off of the exterior hull when the EEV is going to deploy, but at the same time there are catwalks and ladders which makes it seem like it's on the interior.

After spending some time with the book, some thoughts:

- The attention to detail is pretty wild, and a lot of the "marginalia" (for lack of a better word) is as interesting as the technical drawings themselves.  What's present is really dense, there's a lot to dig into

- That said, 'Alien Resurrection' gets shafted pretty hard. The exteriors of the Betty are neat, but the exteriors of the Auriga felt lackluster compared to the rest of the blueprints in the book; not a single feature on the outside of the Auriga gets labeled. Also, neither the Betty nor the Auriga get interior diagrams of any kind, which was a bit unfortunate since the chapter introduction rattles off a ton of interior sets from the movie and even includes some concept art of the Betty's cockpit. Also the APC from 'Prometheus' gets twice as many pages as the Auriga.

- What we get for 'Alien3' is great, but it left me wanting more. After we get full deck plans of the Nostromo and Hadley's Hope, I was hoping we'd get a full facility schematic for Fury 161. We get some parts (the quinitricetalyne storage, the abbatoir, the furnaces, the mold press), but there's a lot that we don't (the admin areas, mess hall, infirmary, prisoner quarters/common area, the exterior of the facility).

- The Sulaco has a bit of a similar problem, in that we're only shown drawings for areas we explicitly see in the movie (hangar bay, ready room, and cryosleep bay/mess hall), it kind of would have been neat to get a hint at what else is in the ship. I guess 'Aliens: Colonial Marines' will have to do.

- the Narcissus, Dropship, and APC are real standouts, they get a ton of interesting detail. I didn't know that one of the lockers in the Narcissus doubled as a cryosleep chamber, I don't remember seeing that anywhere else but it's a cool detail (and makes the escape plan in 'Alien' make a lot more sense with 3 people ). Checking Xenopedia, there isn't a mention of the third cryopod. There's a lot of technical marginalia for the Dropship and APC, and it's pretty much all copied verbatim from the CMTM (with acknowledgements).

- Take the time to check the stuff in the blueprint detail box in the corner of each blueprint, there's some neat stuff in there. Whoever this "Graham J Langridge" guy is, he lives for a long time based on the dates in the boxes.

- Including drawings for the Derelict and Space Jockey felt weird, and the drawings themselves aren't that interesting, but the side notes are pretty cool. It feels like those side notes are "the point", and the drawings are just a justification for including them since it's meant to be a blueprint book.

All in all it's a pretty great book, and a cool companion book for the CMTM. It's weighted a little heavily in favor of the first two movies which is unfortunate, but that's true of most Alien media. I was kind of hoping this book would buck the trend, but oh well. All in all it's absolutely worth the wait and absolutely worth picking up.

One final "complaint", the book is really tall and I have no way to fit it on my bookshelves.

[HuDaFuK]

I'd guess the lack of overview re:the third and fourth film locations is because they never really considered that when they made the sets. The sets for the first two movies were largely interconnected, were they not? I get the impression Alien 3 and Resurrection were more spread out, even over separate stages.

[USG Ishimura]

The whole Alien Resurection thing was down to two things; a set page count that had to be adhered to - I had to be mindful that the first two movies (and the third, depending on who you talk to) are way more popular than the fourth, so with a limited page count, absolutely more was going to be done on the earlier movies.

Second, there was not the reference available for Resurrection and much of Alien 3. There were some set photos, but it's a whole different beast when one is trying to turn limited information into an accurate blueprint. It takes much more additional time trying to figure out what goes where. I think it covers something like 22-23 different subjects, so two years, one a month, evenings and weekends...you can probably appreciate how quick the time goes, and there is no access to a mystical vault where one can access all the information. The focus had to be where the reference was available the most, and the line had to be drawn somewhere (no pun intended).

I can confirm that I have the same lifespan as Yoda.

I'd guess the lack of overview re:the third and fourth film locations is because they never really considered that when they made the sets. The sets for the first two movies were largely interconnected, were they not? I get the impression Alien 3 and Resurrection were more spread out, even over separate stages.

Plus with Alien 3, the sets were rapidly changing because of the difficulties the movie had when filming.

Who can we blame for the spelling of Weyland on those blueprints?

James Cameron who changed it for Aliens, then the arrival of Prometheus and Covenant. :-)

[SM]

I tried to put a floorplan of the prison together back when I was working on the aforementioned thing with Graham, John Mullaney, Mike Lynch and a bunch of other guys years ago and all we really had were some set blue prints of the abbatoir and blast furnace.  I made copious notes of regarding how many levels are in the prison, where various things are on what level and how they're connected.  Didn't really get very far and what I came up with was fairly crap.  It's not like Alien where all the corridors leads to different rooms.

I'm sure Graham's work would be infinitely better.

[Whiskeybrewer]

I tried to put a floorplan of the prison together back when I was working on the aforementioned thing with Graham, John Mullaney, Mike Lynch and a bunch of other guys years ago and all we really had were some set blue prints of the abbatoir and blast furnace.  I made copious notes of regarding how many levels are in the prison, where various things are on what level and how they're connected.  Didn't really get very far and what I came up with was fairly crap.  It's not like Alien where all the corridors leads to different rooms.

I'm sure Graham's work would be infinitely better.

I was about to ask had anyone attempted to make there own floor plan of Fury

[Xenomrph]

The whole Alien Resurection thing was down to two things; a set page count that had to be adhered to - I had to be mindful that the first two movies (and the third, depending on who you talk to) are way more popular than the fourth, so with a limited page count, absolutely more was going to be done on the earlier movies.

Second, there was not the reference available for Resurrection and much of Alien 3. There were some set photos, but it's a whole different beast when one is trying to turn limited information into an accurate blueprint. It takes much more additional time trying to figure out what goes where. I think it covers something like 22-23 different subjects, so two years, one a month, evenings and weekends...you can probably appreciate how quick the time goes, and there is no access to a mystical vault where one can access all the information. The focus had to be where the reference was available the most, and the line had to be drawn somewhere (no pun intended).

I can confirm that I have the same lifespan as Yoda.

I'd guess the lack of overview re:the third and fourth film locations is because they never really considered that when they made the sets. The sets for the first two movies were largely interconnected, were they not? I get the impression Alien 3 and Resurrection were more spread out, even over separate stages.

Plus with Alien 3, the sets were rapidly changing because of the difficulties the movie had when filming.

Who can we blame for the spelling of Weyland on those blueprints?

James Cameron who changed it for Aliens, then the arrival of Prometheus and Covenant. :-)

Would you be able to clarify the EEV launch diagram page? I found it confusing for some reason.

[USG Ishimura]

Would you be able to clarify the EEV launch diagram page? I found it confusing for some reason.

Sure, I'd be happy to. I had just the page to devote to it, I would have liked to create some kind of 3d view to it, but time and space were against me.

The view you see at the bottom of that page is basically an elaboration of the view you see at the beginning of the movie as the EEV launches. There are behind-the-scenes shots on the bluray features that show more of the space around the one EEV and you see multiple EEV units around it, plus the door and catwalk at the top of the view against the wall. So this view was based on the behind the scenes shot, I just elaborated and extended the view out a little.

The top view is the new one. There has been all kinds of dialogue on forums where people asked how the EEV's are loaded with the cryotubes. It didn't really make any sense as we only see the one shot in the movie as the EEV pulls away from the hull, and the bottom row of EEV's are in a different orientation - rotated 180 degrees. It seemed like in order for it to work, the bottom row of EEV's would have to be loaded from the bottom, with the top row loaded from the top. Again, did not make sense.

So I instead pictured both rows of EEV's with the back of each (where the fins are) set within some kind of 'cage' attached to a large swinging armature. When there is no emergency, the rows of EEV's are in a horizontal orientation, close up to the ceiling of the large EEV chamber. That is what you see in the top diagram. This means that the cryotubes can be loaded much more easily and there aren't all these tunnels going everywhere through which the cryotubes would travel. I called my version the 'Cryotube Loader Magazine' because that is how I pictured it, the loader putting the cryotubes into the EEV like bullets through a magazine into a rifle. Kind of fitting seeing as the Sulaco looks like a huge gun. Another way to look at it is those large slides side by side at a fairground where kids climb to the top and they go down to the bottom. Cryotubes at the top side by side, transported down to the EEV at the bottom.

Now I also had to think well, what if the crew / marines are not in a cryotube? For that I essentially used the idea from Alien Resurrection, where the USM soldiers run along catwalks to ladders that drop into the EEV from above. So that is the Gantry and Walkway you see at the top of the diagram. Of course I would not have been able to do this had I left the EEV's in the same position as they are shown in the movie.

So once the EEV's are loaded, hatches closed, the whole 'cage' assembly holding these EEV's in-place swing down using the Swinging Link Armature as a pivot and position the EEV's against the hull. EEV's locked in place. The cage detaches, then swings back up out of the way. If the emergency has not been canceled, then the Blast Panels blow out away from the hull, and the EEV's launch.

Hope this helps with some of the thinking behind it and how I thought about it.
If you have any questions about the other things in the book send them on over, I like the conversation.

Another thing about the 'Cygnus' Refinery from 'Alien'.

Back in 2009-2011 when I finished the original Nostromo print and it was then in Alien: Vault, I had the Refinery noted on there as a 'Tesotek 2100-B'.

I searched on the internet for any real-life refinery names that work with mineral ore and fuel processing. I found two companies, chopped the names up, mixed a couple together and came up with 'Tesotek'. It sounded cool, kind of like Texaco.

So I come to do the book several years later, and I'm trying to find on Google the webpages where I got the inspiration for the name. And what do I find? A website called 'Testotek' pops up since I made the original print that manufactures supplements that help guys with muscle-gain and low testosterone.

I thought, 'oh shit'.

So I had to think of an alternative name pretty darn quick as this was one of the last pages I completed, and now I affectionately know the refinery as a CYGNUS Tesotek 2100-B. Nothing really to do with the ship in 'The Black Hole'. 

[Xenomrph]

So those EEV launch drawings are the interior hull? The blast panels that are flush with the hull threw me off, since they're gone in the bottom picture.
Also did you pick a location on the Sulaco hull that the EEVs deploy from? I didn't see one called out in the blueprints but maybe I missed it.

Was the third cryotube in the Narcissus your doing, or is that sourced from anywhere else? Either way, I like it.

[USG Ishimura]

So those EEV launch drawings are the interior hull? The blast panels that are flush with the hull threw me off, since they're gone in the bottom picture.
Also did you pick a location on the Sulaco hull that the EEVs deploy from? I didn't see one called out in the blueprints but maybe I missed it.

Was the third cryotube in the Narcissus your doing, or is that sourced from anywhere else? Either way, I like it.

That is correct, interior hull. The location of the EEV's on the hull is still up for debate, the only area that is large enough and does not clash with anything else is maybe at the front toward the top of the ship, but with the scales of the dropship and EEV compared to the Sulaco, not sure. It's a tough one. This is the conclusion Jan Rukr came to also on his papercraft model of the Sulaco he did where he picked that area.

I did develop the third cryotube area. I pictured it as a 'bed' set within the wall, waist height, with a sliding door on the front that would seal the same as a usual cryotube. Kind of similar to the Autodoc in the Nostromo Infirmary where Kane gets his scan. The missing third cryotube in the movie bugged everyone me included; then I added the water closet, when you gotta you, you gotta go. That was basically a similar size to an airplane water closet. Just about has enough headroom, it's close.

The Narcissus was tricky in parts because the back of the set where the door is and the front part where the viewports are were built much more vertically than how they appear on filming miniatures. So when transferring the set into the Narcissus drawing section cuts there was more dead space, but I think it worked out okay.

[Local Trouble]

I always assumed that the shuttle had only two cryotubes but Ripley decided they would take their chances with it anyway.  Isn't that why they had to stock up on all that coolant for the air support system?