Aliens: Creation of the Alien Queen according to the concept drawings

leading from
Aliens: James Cameron's Alien Queen,

a) Initiating the construction of the queen
Jim already had a creature in mind as seen in the pre-production artwork, and that it culd be done as a bunraku puppet

He came to Stan with the idea of putting two men inside a giant alien queen suit, and Stan's first thought was "This man is out of his mind." because nothing had been done like that before.

In the next moment, he trusted Jim, thinking that since he had imagined it, then Stan and his company could probably do it.

When they worked together,  Jim took a drawing of Stan's and redrew again. 

 

They went back and forth like that, planning the creature out with Winston's creature constructing expertise in mind.

At one point, the two of them were sitting at Jim's house, both of them drawing different parts of the Alien Queen, with Jim on one board and Stan on the other.

1. Stan Winston: Jim had seen what we could do with puppets on Terminator, and so it made perfect sense that he thought of puppeteering techniques when he needed a way to realise the alien queen. But, even so, it was a huge leap of faith to believe that we could build a fourteen-foot-tall, acting puppet. (The Winston Effect, p79)
2. Stan Winston: When Jim first came to me with this idea of putting two guys inside a giant alien queen suit, I thought 'This man is out of his mind.' Nothing like that had been don before. But in the next moment, I realized that if he had imagined it, we could probably do it. (The Winston Effect, p79)
3. Stan Winston: It was another one of those simple but ingenious ideas, to put people inside this thing, moving their own arms around, and translating that motion to the queen arms. If we tried to do that mechanically, we would never have had the same level of control or dynamics that we got with human performers. We had to design the creature in such a way that the stunt men would fit inside. (The Winston Effect, p80)
4. Stan Winston: Jim took that drawing of mine and redrew it again. We went back and forth like that. At one point, the two of us were sitting at his house, both of us drawing different parts of the alien queen. Jim on one board, and myself on the other. (The Winston Effect, p80)

b) Alien Queen with backward double knee joints and long toes, and four arms, by Stan Winston. The suit idea looked as if they intended to have one of the puppeteers legs inside the upper part of the Alien Queen's legs

Alien Queen sketch by Stan Winston (source: The Winston Effect)
(scan taken from http://www.ethermetic.com)

 

 

 

 

 

c) See: Alien Queen with backwards knee joints by Stan Winston, and only two arms. Still with the puppeteer's legs in the upper part of the queen's legs.

 

 

 

 
 

 

 

 

d)  See: Alien Queen with backwards knee joints by Stan Winston with the extra pair of arms.

 

 

 

e) See: Aliens: Alien Queen sideview drawing

 

Alien Queen (source: http://www.icollector.com/Conceptual-artwork-for-Alien-Queen-from-Aliens_i10031213)

 

f) Getting to the final design

Before the point when he drew this, James Cameron had been creating lots of what he referred to as "Notional drawings" of what the alien queen should look like.

Then it got to a point where he found his final alien queen design and had been getting down to the practical details.

He could show the ribs in the neck and the gill like structures, and also there were biomechanical structures above these that he saw as a homage to HR Giger's detailing

 

This illustration of the queen directly below that Jim Cameron created during the preproduction on Aliens specifically for Stan Winston and his team to make use of. 

 

See also: Aliens: Alien Queen side view concept drawing by Jim Cameron 

 

  

Side view of the alien queen (that also can be found on page 146-147 of Tech Noir; The Art of Jim Cameron)

 

1. James Cameron: So with the drawing on Page 146-147, I'm packaging all these ideas into a practical design and presenting something finite to Stan's team that they could sculpt. Up until this point I had drawn lots of notional designs for the Alien Queen but with this drawing I was getting down to the practical details. I'm showing the ribs in the neck and the gill like structures, and the biomechanical structures above those that are a kind of homage to H. R. Giger's detailing.  And then the big carapace, which, like the thanator's, was influenced by the triceratop's frill. I also designed a forepart of the head that would emerge from under the carapace. I wanted to take the mouth-within-a-mouth concept from Alien a step forward, so the entire head extends out unexpectedly and then she also has the interior jaw like other xenomorphs. I thought it would create a cool reveal when Ripley comes face to face with her for the first time (Tech Noir; The Art of Jim Cameron)
2. James Cameron: These are studies that I sketched when I was trying to figure out the design of the Alien Queen around the time I was writing the treatment. I didn't exactly know how we were going to pull it off, but I had this general idea that it would be this big Bunraku puppet, operated by a team of unseen puppeteers. But I didn't spend a lot of tme thinking about how were going to make the Alien Queen work in that early stage. I just came up with the designs and figures I'd see where the project went.  (Tech Noir: The Art of Jim Cameron)

 

 

 

 

g) See: Aliens: Jim Cameron's Alien Queen whole front view concept drawing

 

 

 

 

 

 

h) Illustration of final alien queen by Jim Cameron

 

Jim Cameron decided to have a go with the biomechanics concept without HR Giger.

He went away from having the alien beast look so phallic and instead tried to make it what he perceived as female.

He gave it a very long, elegant, tapering and almist a hight of high-heel look at the foot.

Then for him it turned into a creature that was just hideous and yet somehow beautiful.

There were a number of elements that Giger had created that interested him such as the tubes coming out of the creature's back, the long phallic head that was just pivoting on the central back and he was somehow reminded of a triceratops

 

What he then did was take the back part of the triceratops skull with the armour frill and went ahead with the idea of that mixing it with various ideas that can be noticed in Giger's paintings.

 

He decided to have the series of spines sticking out of its back form a sort of a threat display structure.

 

This is an illustration of the queen that Jim created during the preproduction on Aliens specifically for Stan Winston and his team to make use of.

 

 

1. James Cameron: Well, obviously I was inspired by Giger, but as a lover of monsters and creatures, and a designer of them myself. I wanted to have my own go at it. So I took the biomechanics concept, which was very phallic in the creature created for Alien, and turned it around and tried to make it female. So I gave her a very long, elegant, tapering and almost a kind of a high-heel look at the foot, and then she just kind of turned into this creature that was just hideous and yet somehow beautiful. There were so many gestures that Giger had just created out of whole cloth; the tubes coming out of the creature's back, the long phallic head that was just pivoting on the central neck and that reminded me a little bit of a triceratops. So I took  the back part of the triceratops skull with the armor frill and just ran with it and mixed it with many of Giger's biomechanoid gestures. It's not like it came to me in a dream or something. It was fairly methodical. The series of spines sticking out of its back form a kind of threat-display structure,  but that is just purely an extrapolation from the tubes sticking out of Giger's alien, which I came to called the Alien Warrior
   (James Cameron's Story of Science Fiction p37)

 

 

James Cameron demonstrates how two puppeteers will fit inside the Alien Queen puppet.

Shane Mahan and Dick Warlock, in position to puppeteer the arms for the Garbage Bag Test.

 

 

 

i) Idea the alien queen concept

 

Jim had come up with a concept for how the Alien Queen puppet would work, but the next they had to figure out how to do it.

Jim Cameron's idea was that it was basically a crane that's going to move up and down and they would built a creature around it and they would have the men inside dealing with the arms. 

 

There were going to be two men inside the puppet, one on each side of the chest. 

 

One would be on the left with his head inside her chest, essentially

 

Then his left arm would operate the Queen's main upper arm, while his right arm operating the Queen's left front arm that was a small T. Rex-style arm,

 

Then the guy on the right hand side would be doing the same for the opposite side.

 

Stan Winston thought it was the dumbest idea he had ever heard.

 

Jim Cameron then said "Let's test it."

 

Stan Winston Studio crew prepare to hoist the foam queen for the performance test.

James Cameron films Stan and crew putting the Garbage Bag Queen through her paces.

 

j)  Testing it out

 

They were out in the carpark/parking lot behind Stan Winston's stop with Jim Cameron shooting it.  

 

So they quickly built a belly pan from fiberglass that was molded into the shape of the two men. 

 

They hung it on a crane, laid the two puppeteers on it and started covering them with trash bags and foam core. 

 

They built a big, eight foot  long foam core Alien Queen head, stuck it on  and covered it with trash bags.

 

They created arms made from brooms and then also covered them with trash bags. 

 

So at this point everything was glistening and black because of the trash bags, which worked out as a very rough approximation of how the Queen's skin would look in the film

 

They had two of Stan's men,  Shane Mahan and Dick Warlock, positioned inside

 

Jim Cameron  said "Move your arms around" 

 

And the guys start moving the two main arms around, swinging them back and forth. 

 

Then he said "Move the little T.rex arms around."

 

And they started moving those in conjunction with the larger arms. 

 

And all of a sudden this thing came to life in front of then. 

 

Then Stan Winston said, "What about the legs?" 

 

So they got more foam core cut into leg shapes, covered those with trash bags, and just wired them onto the Queen. 

 

Cameron then got a couple of guys to move the legs around with a stick, Bunraku-style. 

 

To complete it, they created a tail which they had another of Stan's men operate with a fishing-pole

 

Once they saw it could work, they knew that they could do it for real as a puppet, involving two people in a suit with animatronics.

 

It took then about four hours, but at the end of the test they had a living, breathing moving Alien Queen. 

 

They saw it could be puppeteered and it was directable; the only issue waas that it lacked any articulation in its head. 

 

But Stan Winston said " We can just run all the pneumatics and hydraulic cables out of the ass of the puppet and away from the camera. The Queen's tail will whip around and be a misdirect that hides that interface. We can do this." 

 

Jim Cameron replied said "Fuckin A right. Let's do it."

1. Stan Winston: We put this garbage bag queen alien together, put a couple of stunt men in it, and suspended it out behind the studio, just to see if this concept worked, and it did.  Once we knew that the concept worked, all we had to do was figure out how we were going to build it for real.  The alien queen was a big deal in a lot of ways, but this concept test proved that it could be done as. basically, a big puppet - two people in a suit with animatronics. (The Winston Effect, p80)
2. John Rosengrant: Jim [Cameron] had this concept that it was basically a crane that’s going to move up and down and we’ll build a creature around it and then we’ll have the guys inside dealing with the arms (https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/these-amazing-pictures-show-how-they-made-aliens-134739138.html)
3. John Rosengrant: Originally it was going to be a test of the fibreglass plate with the guys inside and then we started mocking up the whole thing and we covered it up with black garbage bags, We tested that out in the parking lot behind Stan’s shop with Jim shooting it and once we saw that could work, we were off to the races. (https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/these-amazing-pictures-show-how-they-made-aliens-134739138.html)
4. James Cameron: This is an illustration of the queen that I created during the preproduction on Aliens specifically for Stan Winston and his team. I'd come up with a basic concept for how the Alien Queen puppet would work, but next we had to figure out how to do it. There was going to be two guys inside the puppet, one on each side of the chest. So one would be on the left with his head inside her chest, essentially and his right arm operating the Queen's left front arm, one small T.Rex-style arms at the front. Then his left arm would operate the Queen's main upper arm. And the guy on the right hand side would be doing the same. Now Stan thought this was the dumbest idea he'd ever heard. I said "Let's test it."" So we quickly built a belly pan from fiberglass that was molded into the shape of the two guys. We hung it on a crane, laid the two puppeteers on it and started covering them with trash bags and foam core. We built a big, eight foot  long foam core Alien Queen head, stuck it on there and covered it with trash bags. We also created some arms made from brooms and then covered those with trash bags. We also created some arms made from brooms and then covered those with trash bags. So at this point everything was glistening and black because of the trash bags, a very rough approximation of how the Queen's skin would look in the film (Tech Noir; The Art of Jim Cameron)
5. James Cameron: Once we had two of Stan's guys positioned inside - Shane Mahan and Dick Warlock- I said. "Move your arms around" And the guys start moving the two main arms around, swinging them back and forth. Then I said "Move the little T.rex arms around.  " And they started moving those in conjunction with the larger arms. And all of a sudden this thing came to life in front of us. Then Stan said, "What about the legs?" So we got more foam core cut into leg shapes, covered those with trash bags, and just wired them onto the Queen. The I got a couple of guys to move the legs around with a stick, Bunraku- style. And to complete it, we created a tail which I got another of Stan's guys to operate with a fishing-pole (Tech Noir: The Art of Jim Cameron)
6. James Cameron: It took us about four hours, but at the end of the test we had a living, breathing moving Alien Queen. It could be puppeteered and it was directable; the only issue waas that it lacked any articulation in its head. But Stan said " We can just run all the pneumatics and hydraulic cables out of the ass of the puppet and away from the camera. The Queen's tail will whip around and be a misdirect that hides that interface. We can do this." I said "Fuckin A right. Let's do it"(Tech Noir: The Art of Jim Cameron)

k) See: Study for Alien Queen's head and hands concept art by CT Thorne

 
 

 

l)  See: Front view of Alien Queen head drawing (with vaginal gill motif in neck) by James Cameron

 

 

 

m) See: Side view of Alien Queen head and chest by James Cameron