leading from
a) Another artist Elliott Scott worked on a series of concept drawings
supposedly in March of 1977 , basically
showing scenes from the script from the time it included and ancient Red
City (Some of the designs are revealed to be alternatives to locations in Petra which is a place in Southern Jordan).
Curiously in some of these illustrations, Ripley shows up as a female character. One might wonder if these were done in 1978 when that decision to make her female appeared to be made.These were in the possession of "Alien" executive Peter Beale until he auctioned them in 2017 at
http://natedsanders.com.
b) Leviathan exterior and interior.
Leviathan peculiarly becomes a vast rocket spacecraft shaped like a tuning fork with a sphere in the form
. The inside is divided into smaller areas for humans to live in and vast chambers for storage and the engine rooms
.
The control and the hypersleep vault might be seen to be the interesting images from the collection, but mostly they appear to be derivative of the films that seemed the most popular at the time, such as Forbidden Planet, 2001 A space Odyssey, perhaps even Barbarella.
The idea of the design of the Hypersleep vault would bleed into the Nostromo interior , and perhaps the corridors drawings as well.
 |
| Leviathan, (10, III) |
 |
| Leviathan control room (10th March, 1977) |
 |
| Engine Room (15.III) |
 |
| Companion Ways (13th March 1977) |
 |
| Engine Room |
 |
| Galley (15, III) |
 |
| Interior Dome |
 |
| Hypersleep Vault (15, III ) |
 |
| Companion Way |
 |
| Ripley moving through tunnel ship |
 |
| Tunnel set plan (10. III) |
 |
| Corridors |
 |
| Undercarriage (10. III) |
c) On The Planetoid
This shows that Scotty was working on concepts to do with the idea of a black ship that eventually would become part of the Cylinder script, however the one shown here seems to be an alien looking spherical vessel surrounded by bands.
While this alien derelict ship seems very simple and abstract, the way it might reference the famous painting Philosopher lecturing on the orrery by Joseph Wright of Derby appears to be very interesting.
Instead of the concrete bunker and also the city found in another script, here known as the Red City, with scenes drawn as alternatives to locations in Petra.
 |
| Black Spacecraft (15th March, 1977) |
 |
| Red City |
 |
| Red City Temple |
Fascinating - it is discoveries like this that make this the Alien site par excellence.
ReplyDeleteThe cryochamber design is interesting in that the ceiling mounted central monitor seems to have been incorporated into the final bridge set.
As for the 'flower petals' layout we all know and love, I noticed a detail in the lower left hand corner of the 'Countdown' comic strip double-spread excerpted on this page:
https://fontsinuse.com/uses/29175/countdown-comic-issues-1-and-2
... that might be only a coincidence.
Well, thankyou!
DeleteI probably would like to imagine that a Countdown might have been some sort of publication considered sacred still although it didn't last for long, but it ought to to have been interesting for British sci-fi enthusiasts of the day . It had a number of stories based upon various Gerry Anderson series and perhaps I would to imagine that some of the Alien production crew who for Gerry Anderson might have been taking note of these things. So I would like to imagine that they swiped the flower shaped cryopods layout from there.
Most of the designs in Alien are a product of evolution of ideas from over time, with ideas coming from all over the place fed into the movie production, doing something unusual and different with it. I do wonder where the idea of ceiling mounted central monitor might have come from before this even, it certainly was a fantastic idea.
Elliot Scott did some rather silly unimaginative images in some of the illustrations and then he could came up with something that seemed like a stroke of genius, and then the monitors on the ceiling that he drew certainly found its way into the Nostromo interior design.
A lot of the connections to be made between various things are often assumed to be coincidence, but somehow these connections can form interesting patterns of relationships between things, as if a form of evolution can be seen happening. A number of Elliot Scott's drawings show signs of earlier famous paintings hundreds of years earlier, and this strange form of reinterpretation of earlier pictures has been going on perhaps the dawn of mankind, but often the people doing the drawings etc never seem to acknowledge where they're taking ideas from all the time, and perhaps it might not be a good idea to blab about that sort of thing.
Okay, it's blogged now. Many thanks! https://alienexplorations.blogspot.com/2021/03/alien-development-of-hypersleep-chamber.html
Delete