October 2015

Leading from

updates 2015

Wednesday 14th October 2015
1) Continued to develop the page The story so far on Dali's Soft Construction with boiled beans (Premonition of civil war) with full understanding that about 99.999% of people with an interest in Alien would absolutely have no idea what it has to do with anything to do with Alien, but I have just come to realise that the strange construction may as well be a plough. which would be quite a resonable thing for him to transform like this.

Tuesday 13th October 2015
1) Added " Goya's "Unos á otros" also inspire the shape of the buttocks in Dali's painting" to Goya etchings inspired Salvador Dali's "Soft construction with boiled beans (premonition of civil war) " ? 
2) Added image of Tree of Life as seen in the Mayan Dresden Codex to the page about Ron Cobb's birth temple for Alien. This tree of life looks as if it is a tentacled monster coming out of the human victim, and there is something similar in Cobb's artwork.
3) Created a main page for Salvador Dali's "Soft construction with boiled beans (premonition of civil war)" which links to other pages dealing with the various subjects about the painting 


Monday 12th October 2015
1) Added William Gibson on Alien 3
2) Changed "Salvador Dali's  "Soft Construction With Boiled Beans (Premonition of civil war) inspired by Francisco Goya's "Subir y bajar"to "Salvador Dali's  "Soft Construction With Boiled Beans (Premonition of civil war) inspired by Francisco Goya's "Subir y bajar" to
with the discovery of another Goya etching Goya's "Todos caerán"(All Will Fall) that  inspired the form of the buttocks in the named Dali painting  that has now been added to the page
Goya etchings inspired Salvador Dali's "Soft construction with boiled beans (premonition of civil war) " ? 


Saturday 10th October 2015
1) Added Blade Runner: The City talking about the ideas for the city in Blade Runner generally coming from the minds of Ridley Scott and Syd Mead and also something to point out would be that when William Gibson started thinking about an idea for Alien 3, he wanted to have it set in a Blade Runner type sey, but this was seen as being too expensive. This article will be expanded on more and more


Wednesday 7th October 2015
1) Updated Reaching "Alien: Paradise Lost" (Prometheus 2) with information from awardscampaign.com/2015/10/07/ridley-scott-teases-new-group-of-travelers-in-prometheus-sequel-alien-paradise-lost/  
 


Tuesday 6th October 2015
1) Updated Carl Sagan and Alien with information from ( https://www.yahoo.com/movies/Ridley Scott on Bringing 'The Martian' to Life and How He's Reviving 'Blade Runner' , September 29, 2015)


Saturday 2nd October 2015
1) Further alterations to The Thing (2011)


Friday 1st October 2015
1) Added Derelict scenario for The Thing (2011) but now it is turning into an article about The Thing (2011) going beyond the simple need to talk about the background scenario. Indeed this blog seems to want to talk about the whole genre of films connected with the Alien franchise

2) Added Kuiper's Monster concept for John Carpenter's The Thing (1982)

Alien: Chris Foss' Leviathan Sketch No.3

leading from

Chris Foss' early Nostromo concepts

a) Sketch no 3 suggests by its number that it may be a continued development of Sketch No. 2 although No2 was a near finished illustration.

 

 Chris Foss' Sketch of Leviathan, no.3 (courtesy of Charles Lippincott at Facebook, 1  and 2 )

from Hardware: The Definitive SF Works of Chris Foss

b) Mike Jackiw at Charles Lippincott's Facebook page offers a comparison between the 

design of this vessel that is the Earth Defense Flagship Andromeda from mid 1970s 
Japanese anime series Space Battleship Yamoto, and this can also be said about Chris Voss'
Sketch No. 2

Flagship Andromeda from 1974-75 anime series Space Battleship Yamoto

Alien : Egg silo exterior

leading from

The Egg silo

a) Where Ridley had been going
Ridley Scott had been experimenting with the idea of an egg silo inspired by the Castle Harkonnen,
and had been exploring the idea of a giant rocket capsule shaped derelict ship with Moebius before he left.  (see: Moebius derelict exterior and Ridley Scotts Early Egg Silo Exterior )

Ridleygram of structures on the planetoid (image from weyland-yutaniarchives)

b) What Giger drew
HR Giger designed a breast shaped building called the Egg Silo, a hundred and fifty metres tall and two hundred metres in diameter.  He drew the images in April of 1978. Perhaps he borrowed the shape from Ridley's early idea for a derelict ship that he work on with Moebius. It also included ideas from Giger's painting Dune I which showed an entrance to the Castle Harkonnen.

Egg Silo exterior (uploaded by me, taken from Giger's Alien)

Egg Silo exterior (uploaded by me, taken from Giger's Alien)

Egg Silo exterior (uploaded by me, taken from Giger's Alien)

Giger's Dune I (Entrance to Castle Harkonnen), 1976

Ridleygram of explorer climbing up the side of the egg silo

c) Giger's Painting
In the painting, in the rock formations, suggestions of perhaps long fossilized life forms. Perhaps the  rock sticking out of the lower ground to the left of the building is a half formed impression of Cthulhu type entity with its tentacled face and thick claw. Giger had brought his designs at the time over to Shepperton for approval on March 30th of 1978, although they were met with general approval, he is told that his egg silo would be too expensive to build.

Quote source

1. HR Giger: The designs I brought with me meet general approval. The eggsilo (plate 378) can't be built because it would be too expensive. Pity! (Giger's Alien, p14)

378: Egg Silo exterior (uploaded by me, taken from Giger's Alien)

d) Kenner Alien Logo

The design of this structure would be used in the logo for the Kenner Alien toys that would soon be sold.

e) Also see Candidate for a Giger Cthulhu

curious detail from 378: Egg Silo exterior

Alien : HR Giger's Egg Silo Interior version I

 leading from

egg silo

a) Reaching the first version
By 19th July, 1978, Giger's concept for an Egg Silo interior had evolved. This became version 1.
The egg wagons that had scooped up the eggs and transported them along a rail to the pipes had disappeared, along with their monorails, they had now been transformed into big pregnant capsules on the wall of the silo which Giger had decided were symbols of fertility. Above the capsules were entrance tubes coming down at the side rather than in the centre of a circular buildings, and a space for the hieroglyphics painting to be seen. (see also : Placement of Life Cycle Tableau )

Work 386 Egg Silo version I

b) Echoes of Foss
After comparing Chris Foss' elongated derelict ship and Giger's Egg Silo version I painting, it might be easy to assume that Giger had taken the general form of Foss' derelict as a starting point for the painting, and now the two slit windows on the pod from Foss' derelict that had translated themselves into a slightly different form in one of Moebius' earlier derelict designs has almost seem to crawl into Egg Silo version 1 as two slit like eye like spaces above the pod, or maybe such abstract bilateral forms protruding from the tops of various of Foss' structures that might be such things as engines or something similar to two rectangular radars fused together that might make one think of robot eyes or visors ( See Chris Foss' Alien temple interior and Chris Foss' derelict, 
and Moebius Alien spaceship concepts part 2)

Front pod from a derelict ship by Chris Foss'

front pod from Moebius derelict with eye like
spaces at the front inspired by Foss' derelict

Source Quotes

1. HRGiger:19th July 1978, Shepperton Studios. Luckily the wretched idea of only having six eggs has been dropped. Scott somehow managed to persuade O'Bannon, or else he's simply acted on his own authority. The victory is followed by another defeat. During my absence someone has attacked me in the rear and had decided to do away with the big "pregnant" capsules (plate 386), the symbol of fertility in this set. The reason: ' They're superfluous." Superfluous? When Voysey, who has to be working in five places at once, has prepared a scale mdoel in meticulous detail (plates 386d and e)? I suppose I shall never master the secret of how such decisions are taken. It is getting clear to me that my creative capacity is slowly but surely being numbed. I'm still convinced that the best critic of an artist's work is the artist himself. (Giger's Alien, p44)

drawing with another variable for the egg silo interior
with pregnant capsule to the side of the entrance shafts
from Giger's Alien Diaries

sketch from Giger's Alien

sketch from Giger's Alien

sketch from Giger's Alien

from Giger's Alien Diaries

c) Voysey creates miniature
Peter Voysey had been busy created a 1/25th scale model of the silo interior, however despite his work on this,  in Giger's absence the pregnant capsules were declared superfluous and the entrance tubes disappeared as well 

Segment of 1/25th Model of egg silo

1/25th egg silo version 1 model from Alien Legacy documentary

1/25th egg silo version 1 model from Alien Legacy documentary

1/25th Model of egg silo

Alien: Chris Foss' Alien Temple Interior

leading from

Chris Foss' art

and  
HR Giger's egg silo interior version i
and 
Chris Foss inspiration for the Nostromo

"Original Chris Foss concept sketch of the
Derelict Ship interior for Alien. The image
depicts a member of the Nostromo landing
party descending into a vast and ornate
sepulcher. The sketch shows Foss’ celebrated
skill while markedly devoid of the later influence
of H.R. Giger. Accomplished in pencil, ink and
gouache on 29 x 18 in. artist leaf. Handwritten
notations “Centre of the Tombe”, “Alien” and
“Chris Foss F 77” at the lower border. Verso
features a sticker in the upper left reading
 “Chris Foss – 7. Centre of the Tombe”. "
(http://www.sciencefictionarchives.com/)

a) The vast temple interior created by Chris Foss had the look of something that was created for giants. The explorer lowers himself from the shaft above above a plinth that might be as large as a three or four story building and perhaps it looks as if it could easily be an oven with a kitchen chimney above it.

Chris Foss pyramid birth temple interior (this copy of the image was taken from http://io9.com/)

b) Vast shaft entrances on the side of the plinth might be the air intakes of huge long engines for airborne craft , the left might secretly be a representation of a strange creature with wide open maws and eyes on top of stalks that seem like siamese twin versions of military ships radar antennae. and long fins or wings sticking out of the back.

 Chris Foss' Alien Birth Temple (courtesy of Charles Lippincott at Facebook)

Alien: HR Giger's Preliminary Egg Silo interior

leading from Alien: The Egg silo

egg wagons (1)

a) Segmented Circular Container
Drawn on the 19th April 1978, early in the production, HR Giger's first drawing for the egg silo, was a circular container, divided into segments of equal size by rods running from the top of the wall to the mid-point of the floor, and each segment was filled with eggs

Egg Wagons (2)

b) Entrance Tube
An entrance tube made from a membrane hangs down from the ceiling, with tubes down the the side. Perhaps an egg is seen to fall from the central tube in the first picture. 

c) Egg Wagons
Little egg wagons with scooper like devices run along a monorail made from the dividing rods and up to the ceiling along the partitions in the building.The wagon swivels around, and a tongue like device extends from it, picking up the eggs and holds its within a container before running up along the wall and up along the arch of the ceiling to deposit it in an opening at the top of an egg tube.

Source quote

1. HR Giger: The interior of the eggsilo which now forms a circular container, is divided into segments of equal size by rods running from the top of the wall to the mid-point of the floor, each segment is filled with eggs. (Giger's Alien, 6th July 1978, p42)

Egg Silo interior showing egg tube and egg wagon (uploaded by me, taken from Giger's Alien)

Egg Silo interior, uploaded by me, taken from Giger's Alien

Alien: The Egg Silo

Leading from
Alien: Making the Movie  

1. Ridley Scott's Egg silo exterior adapted from Giger's Necronomicon
2. HR Giger's Egg Silo Exterior 
3. Silo and The Derelict Squeezed Into One 
4. HR Giger's Preliminary Egg Silo Interior
5. HR Giger's egg silo interior version I
6. HR Giger's egg silo interior version II (still to come)
7. Placement of HR Giger's life cycle tableau