The "Independence Day" biomechanical suit ~ alienex plorations

Leading from
The "Space Jockey as a suit" question
and
Origins of Carlos Huantes babyhead
and
Patrick Tatopoulos

a) The concept of an extra terrestrials inside a suit

Roland Emmerich: I wanted them to follow the mythology of what people expect aliens to look like. There's a certain kind of popular image that everybody constantly draws and I wanted to stick to that. But on the other hand I thought, that's terribly boring. The first image of the alien is not what you think they typically look like. You later discover, in a surprise, that they're exactly how we think they should appear. We simply disguised them first and then slowly revealed their true appearance. (The Making of Independence day. p86)
S.F.X.: Comment s’est déroulée la création des extra-terrestres?
Patrick Tatopoulos: Une fois que Roland m’a ré-orienté vers un design plus classique, j’ai
conçu deux versions différentes des créatures. Il les a étudiées toutes les
deux, mais n’a pas pu me dire laquelle il préférait. C’est alors qu’a germé
dans son esprit l’idée qu’il pourrait y avoir deux extra-terrestres dans le
film, l’un se situant à l’interieur de l’autre. Il a présenté ça comme une
sort de carapace organique qui donnerait une force colossale à une être au
physique frêle. Mes deux concepts figurent donc dans le film.(SFX Octobre 1996, p30)

A fusion of translations by Googletranslate and Babelfish of the above:
SFX: How did the creation of extra-terrestrials take place?
Patrick Tatopoulos: Once Roland got re-orientated to a more conventional design, I designed two different versions of the creatures. He studied both, but could not tell me which he preferred. It was then the idea germinated in his mind that there could be two aliens in the movie, one located inside the other. He presented it as an organic shell that would give a colossal force to a being that was physically frail. My two concepts appear in the film.
Patrick Tatopoulos: I tried to avoid a H.R. Giger look; I wanted the aliens to look like locusts with a reminiscence of a human. They were designed as living exoskeletons, like an oyster, with the pearl, or small alien, inside.(www.vfxhq.com, June 1998)

b) The Giger-esque nature of the design of the suit

Patrick Tatopoulos: Every time I draw something bio-organic, I hear, "That's very Giger." Ah, fuck! Giger has been so influential on me. And Giger defined biomechanical. Whenever you do it, you are screwed because it will look like Giger. That's the power of an incredible artist." (DeathRay, Jun/Jul 2009, p87)

c) The final suit has a head with a face that resembles the mask of the extra-terrestrial hunters from the movie Predator and the way the head stretches back in a narrow form makes it also resemble the creature from Alien, although the back of the head fans out like the fins of some tropical sea creature and this head is a pod for a another extra-terrestrial creature. The creature from Alien has tubes and a short tentacle sprouting from its back, one could never quite make say what these were for other than to balance out the form of the creature as a screen image, but the extra-terrestrial's suit has fully develiped long tentacles sprouting from it's back in a roughly similar way, however one could then make the claim that the suit is a semi-humanoid and very much scaled down version of a Martian War Machine from the War of the Worlds novel which has Martians traveling around in pods that walk around on three legs and have a multitude of tentacles sprouting from the side. (see images at the bottom of the page) Curiously enough Steven Spielberg made his own version of War of the Worlds and inside the Martian War Machines were extra-terrestrial occupants that looked as if they could have been inspired by Patrick Tatopoulos' alien creatures from Independence Day

Patrick Tatopoulos standing before his
sculpture of the biomechanical suit (source: SFX Octobre 1996, p28)

earlier sketch of the Independence Day
Alien (The Suit) by Patrick Tatopoulos (source Internet)

biomechanical suit from "Independence Day" (source: SFX Octobre 1996, p29)

biomechanical suit from "Independence Day" (source Internet)

Tatopoulos prepares the alien for a scene in the Area 51 Laboratory
(source:S.F.X magazine #34 (UK Version) Jan1998, p86)

Independence Day alien coming out from inside the suit
(source Internet)

Independence Day alien coming out from inside the suit (source Internet)

concept art by Patrick Tatopoulos

concept drawings for the extra-terrestrial invaders
(source: SFX Octobre 1996, p30)

maquette of an extra-terrestrial invader (source: SFX Octobre 1996, p30)

bodies aliens in of Independence Day preserved floating in tubes

A urethane rod and cable puppet of the invading alien species
from Independence Day (20th Century Fox, 1996). This 14-inch-tall
puppet is mounted on a brass rod with cables being fed through into the
torso and limbs. Likely used in scenes showing the nuclear missile being
fired into the heart of the mothership by Captain Hiller, played by
Will Smith, and David Levinson, played by Jeff Goldblum. The
puppet shows signs of production wear and age. Accompanied by a
copy of the film. Length, 39 inches (source: http://www.julienslive.com/)