Tim Burgard: Superman Lives

Tim Burgard's character studies of the giant spider bearing 
biomechanic features ( printed in Scifi Now #80, p62)

Back in 1996, Tim Burgard worked on designs for the giant spider creature in Superman Lives, described in the script as the Thanagarian Snare Beast, a creature that has grown to a large size proportions and resembles something of a cross between a squid and a spider, but very bio-mechanical and sleek. And the creature is inhabited by consciousness of the supervillain Brainiac's consciousness.
 
The executive producer Jon Peter's solution was to put something resembling a human face on the creature which despite how much Tim Burgard disapproved he went along with it. Soon his ideas developed into a creature with a head like Giger's Alien but with large mandibles and then also versions near humanoid faces.

(Tim Burgard's art can be found at www.timburgardart.com)

1. Tim Burgard: I worked with a duo of in house special effects producers who had previously worked on Space Jam. For research I visited Rick Baker's studio to see this enormous praying mantis alien he did for the hell of it. I had not more than three meetings with Jon, one of which Smith was part of , but barely sad anything. That meeting where my alien spider design was described by Peters as looking like "something he had for lunch." His solution was th put something resembling a human face on it, which I did despite how wrong I thought he was. After all, what's more alien than a human face?  (Scifi Now #80, p61)
2. Tim Burgard: The first design I submitted (with Kevin Smith at the meeting) was commented on by Jon Peters (the producer) as "looking like something I ate at lunch". Eww! So I did a version with a more human looking head, which to me isn't as scary, but I wasn't paying for it. (www.comicbookmovie.com)
3. Tim Burgard:This scene is the climax and is meant to be scary - I was thinking Alien via giant spider.  (Scifi Now #80, p61) 

In the illustration below, the creature's underbelly is patterned like the wall of the derelict ship opens with the opening's patterns almost reminiscent of the derelict interior walls, as it opens up to unleash multitudes of little spider like creatures