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The Alien Catches Dallas' Scent... [43]

Film Notes: Less is... er, less

Ridley cleverly showed us hardly any of the alien at all. He must have learnt that trick from JAWS. Of course as we all know, the fake shark, christened the 'Floating Turd' by Spielberg and his crew was barely in the movie because it rarely worked.

Above: 'Bruce'. the floating turd from JAWS. He has his own Facebook page! (of course)

Ridley says "We actually got to see quite a lot of the alien". But no. No we didn't. Not at all. Apart from the bit at the end of course; when he's dangling out of the shuttle, looking silly. Listen to me! I'm, like the dissatisfied restaurant customer:

Ugh. That meal was terrible. And the portions were so SMALL.

"Ha ha. And my stuff was hardly even in it!

Still, Giger got an Academy Award. he must have been amazed, considering we hardly got to see any of his stuff. We did get get a good look at his 'Derelict' ship, and that amazing Space Jockey set.

And did you know that Dan O'Bannon hated the Derelict design? Did you know that Scott was lucky he ever got to build the Space Jockey set because the Bean Counters from Fox were griping about the cost? (Though, who could blame them? Wasn't it several hundred thousand dollars?).

Art Notes: More is... More!

No need to worry today folks. You get to see LOADS of the alien. Or at least my weird version of it. Panel 2 even shows 3 of them! Which brings us back to JAWS (honestly sometimes i think this is like some trick that columnists use: introduce an idea at the beginning then somehow bring everything full-circle, back to where you started showing people how cleverly you can create parallels between this and that).

skin implants on the skull
Horrible

The creature's black eyes are absolutely inspired by JAWS. It's amusing too how his backbone extends up his neck, along the top of his head all the way to his nose! I used to pass a bloke on the way to work every morning who had something similar implanted under the skin on his skull. Horrible.

Can't be arsed...

I got off to a good start with that grid/walkway thing over the alien's head but seem to have got bored doing it half-way through. Couldn't do repetitive work? And what did I do? I ended up working in animation.

Oh, the irony (that ties-in with the earlier bit about O'Bannon and Giger's designs).

More, as usual, on Monday. Enjoy your weekend!