Aliens: Alien Egg Layer concept art for Aliens (film released 1986) Jim Cameron references Ugly (for the Ugly club) (work 415) (1979) by HR Giger?

 

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 Aliens: Concept art for Alien Queen Egg Layer by James Cameron

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 HR Giger: Ugly (1979) (work 415) by HR Giger

a) One above the other. One gets the idea of how this complicated organic pipe form suspended in the air becomes the basis for the idea of the queen and egg sack suspended in the air, before looking for details to fill it in with from elsewhere

 

 

 

 

b) Ugly (work 415) (1979) by HR Giger

 Ugly (1979) by HR Giger

 

 

 

c) One above the other. One gets the idea of how this complicated organic pipe form suspended in the air becomes the basis for the idea of the queen and egg sack suspended in the air, before looking for details to fill it in with from elsewhere

 

 

 

 

d) Vaginal forms

 

 

e) The U shape here would be transformed into the alien queen 

 

 

f) The Y shape here would become the end of the egg sack rises up and becomes attached to the pipe

Aliens: Alien Queen with eggsack concept illustration by Jim Cameron references "The Witches Route" (from around 1520) by Marcantonio Raimondi and Agostino Veneziano?

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Aliens: Jim Cameron's Preproduction Alien Queen Art

a) Alien Queen with egg sack, by Jim Cameron

b) The Witches Route (from around 1520) by Marcantonio Raimondi and Agostino Veneziano

c) Spine and ribcage becomes the tail and back of the Alien queen beast 

d) Crouching human and large bones generally become the alien queen head slanting down to the right, with the head of the human below becoming the point where the face of the queen is.

Aliens: Alien Queen concept drawing by Stan Winston references The Witches Route (from around 1520) by Marcantonio Raimondi and Agostino Veneziano?

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Aliens: Alien Queen drawing by Stan Winston with backwards legs and extra little pair of arms  

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Aliens: Alien Queen drawing with backwards legs and little extra arms by Stan Winston references The Witches Route from around 1520 by Marcantonio Raimondi and Agostino Veneziano via Necronom VII (work 316) (1976) by HR Giger? 

 

 

 

 

a) Alien Queen by Stan Winston

b) The Witches Route (from around 1520) by Marcantonio Raimondi and Agostino Veneziano

c) The images one above the other with the Alien Queen

d) Front part of the alien queen and the equivalent area from "The Witches Route " above

e) The spine becomes the ridge around the shoulder. Human arms becomes the queens arms

f) Long grasses in the background become the head of the beast

g) Human arms become the alien queen's arms

h) Human bodies that becomes the alien queen's legs.

 

This would be the comparable area even if there are no obvious connections

Perhaps the skeletal animal feet at the bottom become the foot on the right of the alien queen image 

 

The leg of the man holding the bone drumsticks on the right, held behind becomes the tail

Aliens: Alien Queen side view concept drawing by Jim Cameron

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Alien Queen Concept Art

 

 

 

a) See: From Piranesi's Carceri to Herge's Unicorn seawreck to Giger's ZDF to Jim Cameron's whole sideview of an alien queen?

 

 

 

b) See: From Study for a Bullfight no 2 (1969) by Francis Bacon to Le Dernier Venue De La Derniere Planete to Giger's ZDF (1980) to a sideview of Alien Queen by Jim Cameron for Aliens?

 

c) See:  References "Dr Wernher von Braun in mission control viewing room, Apollo 11," (1969) by Franklin McMahon  

 

d) See; Aliens: Alien Queen drawn by Jim Cameron references Voight-Kampff machine sketch by Syd Mead for Blade Runner and Giger's ZDF?

Aliens: Jim Cameron's Alien Queen side view concept drawing references Piranesi's Carceri series plate no. xiv?

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From Piranesi's Carceri to Herge's Unicorn seawreck to Giger's ZDF to Jim Cameron's whole sideview of an alien queen?

 

 
a) What this might amount to are the upper slanting beams becoming the head crest, an arch to the left becoming the bend in the tail, stairways at the bottom becoming the feet, arches and slanting beams in the centre becoming the queens main torso.

b)What the dungeon illustration does for the drawing is help to abstract an idea that he had already slightly and I suppose the artist wasn't really really trying to stick to the dungeon drawing, but it gave him a general idea about what he could do.

Piranesis's Carceri series plate no. xiv

 

 

c) The two images side by side with the Alien Queen drawing flipped horizontally

 

 

 

 

 

d Stairs become legs and rope above becomes the tail

e) Stairs and leg on right

f) Central part of the dungeon structure and Alien Queen torso

g) Upper beams and alien queen head

h) One might look at how Hergé seemed to transform the pully into a jelly fish in his Unicorn shipwreck illustration from The Adventures of Tintin and Red Rackham's Treasure which amongst other images I imagine referenced the same Piranesis illustration and I think that the Alien Queen side view drawing references the the Unicorn shipwreck illustration and so I think that the pully in Henu Barque terms represented the three rudders, and there are these three shapes near to the front of the head shell that would have been based on the shapes on the jelly fish's body which in terms of the placement of the winch in the area of the beams that I think became the head, which are enough in the right place. (The jelly fish image as been reversed) 

See also: Unicorn shipwreck from "The Adventures of Tintin and the Red Rackham's Treasure" references Piranesi's Carceri series plate no.XIV?

Aliens: James Cameron's Alien Queen side view concept drawing references the Unicorn shipwreck from The Adventures of Tintin: Red Rackham's Treasure?

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From Piranesi's Carceri to Herge's Unicorn seawreck to Giger's ZDF to Jim Cameron's whole sideview of an alien queen?
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Unicorn Shipwreck from "The Adventures of Tintin and Red Rackham's Treasure" (1944)

a) Jim Cameron's drawing of the side view of the alien queen for Aliens that would be released as a film in 1986

b) The Unicorn shipwreck from The Adventures of Tintin and Red Rackham's Treasure from about 1944. 

My idea is that Jim Cameron would have heard about the use of Tintin illustrations as reference in the concept art for Alien. 

I might wonder if perhaps he found out from Ron Cobb who did some concept work for the Aliens production, or perhaps was there another channel for this sort of information.

c) Details on the back of the shipwreck becomes the upper torso of the creature. One can have thoughts about the windows frames and portholes become the various gaps in the creature's body and spaces in the side of the shell on the head.

 

d) Where the shipwreck is broken near the front would be where the lower spin and the pelvis of the alien queen can be found in the drawing. The broken mast becomes a spike, and the horizontal beam becomes an arm of the beast.


 

e) Lines running through the water become the alien queens head carapace shell, while as mentioned earlier the three curves on the jelly fish's body becom the trinary forms on the side of the front of the shell.

f) Jelly fish with tentacles becomes sides of the neck and shapes on the side of the front of the carapace

g) Detail of the jellyfish body next to near enough what seem like three shapes on the side of the front of the Alien Queen's shell.

Aliens: Jim Cameron's Alien queen egg layer concept art references The Temptation of St Anthony (1946) by Salvador Dali

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Aliens: Concept art for Alien Queen Egg Layer by James Cameron

Concept art for Alien Queen Egg Layer

a) This was the concept art for the scene where Ripley fitst encounters the Alien queen. When Ripley first walk in, the audience doesn't know what they're looking at, this alien beast is hiding in plane sight, as Ridley and Giger explored with the alien beast in the first film. 

The head with the teeth is all retracted up, and the arms are all folded in such a symmetrical way, you don't even know what it is, then you see the ovipositor down to the right of the creature "spitting" out eggs

1. James Cameron: I took everything that's happening on an insect level and blew it up to a much larger scale and took the Giger ethos in the kind of overlaying of it.
   
   So the idea here was, when you first see her you even don't know what that is. There's the idea that Ridley and Giger explored, that it's hiding it in plane sight, she walks in and sees this thing.(From a documentary on the inspiration and design of Aliens that came out online)
2. James Cameron: The business end with the teeth is all retracted up and the arms are all folded in such a symmetrical way, you don't even know what it is, then you've got the ovipositor down here, it's spitting out the eggs.
   

   

   Complete image from magazine about the making of Aliens at the time of the film's release

b) On July 3rd 2018, the realisation came to me that the artist of this piece had the general idea about what the creature should look like and so he used Dali's painting here as a guide to how to lay the composition out.

The Temptation of Saint Anthony (1946) by Salvador Dali

c) The creatures in the Temptation of Saint Anthony by Salvador Dali shows the train of animals with long thin legs and bulky bodies along with a cloud trailing behind, and these forms help the artist to lay out the elongated egg sack

d) With that, I think that the angels wing is adapted to become the lip like form of the ovipositor.

e) The front of the horse with its raised legs and the front of the alien egglayer with the front of the egg sack