Rambaldi's Initial Alien Monster Concept

Leading from:
The Alien creature

First draft storyboard from
Alien Anthology Blu-Ray set

a) The dissatisfaction of Dan O'Bannon
Before Ridley stepped in to have Giger design the alien, we find out fragments of information about a design for the creature by Carlo Rambaldi who later would create the alien mechanised head. The brief references to this only come from interviews with Dan O'Bannon expressing his dissatisfaction with Rambaldi's concept when he was the first man hired by Fox to actually design the creature.

First draft storyboard from
Alien Anthology Blu-Ray set

1. Dan O'Bannon : I fought a year with Fox to hire Giger. I wrote the script so Giger could design those things. And then they picked up the script and said "Naw, we don't want this guy. When has he even designed a movie?" They wanted someone who was a good solid movie pro. They hired Carlo Rambaldi to design the thing originally. He came up with something that looked like a half molten marshmallow with a bunch of big,  pretty blue eyes. For a year I kept thrusting Giger's work in front of them and they kept saying. "This is some wingding who lives in Europe. What movies has he designed?" Only because Ridley was hired on was Giger hired. He took a liking to Giger's work. Without Giger, I don't think we would have had much of a movie" 

(Science Fiction Film Making in the 1980s, p62, & Starlog #71 )

b) Possible depiction in first draft storyboard. 

First draft  storyboard from
Alien Anthology Blu-Ray set

However in 2010, the pre-Ridley Scott "First draft storyboards" drawn by Ron Cobb and Chris Foss together presented in Alien Anthology blu-ray set, there appear to be depictions of the alien that looks approximately like a multi-eyed marshmallow man, whether this was due to the sketch being so rough that it could look like anything and perhaps was roughly inspired by Ron Cobb's lobster like humanoid or if this is the way Rambaldi's creature could have looked is another question, however in all the other storyboards found in this series, great effort was made to reproduce all the designs correctly.  

First draft  storyboard from
Alien Anthology Blu-Ray set

First draft  storyboard from
Alien Anthology Blu-Ray set