Sculpting the Alien costume

leading from

Creating The Alien

Information is being collated still 

a) Giger saw Roger Dicken's attempts at the beginning of June and decided that he had to make the thing himself to make it succeed. Through the night he makes sketches for construction and then shortly afterwards Eddie Butler begins work on modelling the Alien stage III creature and work on this thing goes on through the rest of the month. Eddie worked a long time on the hand.

b) Dan recalled that the plaster shop took a full body cast of the actor, and mounted it standing up on its toes on a wooden base, and Giger put it in his studio and began to build up in it with plasticine and bones. He arranges technical pieces as well as the ribs and spines of widely different animals on the thin sheet of plasticine with an air conditioning duct, screws and human skulls into the shape of the alien. Giger himself work one one half of the costume so that one of his assistants Butler could do the other side copying his design as if it were mirror image . 

c) Another man involved was Andrew who made masks for Star Wars and was supposed to be very experienced with all sorts of materials and would sort out how to make the costume transparent using transparent PVC. Although the idea to make the alien life form transparent was apparent back at the time when Roger Dicken was working on the big creature, the concept was agreed upon as a direction to go at the end of June when Giger was working on the beast. Ridley wanted the suit to be as thin as a contraceptive and as strong as nylon,  so that he could have a man in the suit and it would be flexible enough to be able for the wearer to be able to roll up and have all kinds of things stitched into it, showing such things as the creature's sinews.  

The latex would not give this effect, the material distorted easily and it would lose the transparency easily, and besides that, the fact that Bolaji Badejo was black did not lend itself to this transparency effect.

d) The head was the first thing that was finished and a polyester cast  of the head was finished by the last day of June. The next step was for Giger to create a drawing plan to send to Carlo Rambaldi who would be creating a mechanised version of the Alien's head that was sent with a mould of the Alien's head very soon afterwards to Rambaldi at his studio in America. Peter Voysey would also help to sculpt the Alien stage III.

e) On June 28th, Dan O'Bannon had the great idea of adding an opposing thumb on each hand of the Alien and Eddie worked away on the hand adding the extra thumb

f) By July, at Giger's insistence, two women are brought in, Shirley and Patter are taken on to help with the the modelling of the monster. 

1. Fantastic Films:So the monster was actually designed for one person rather than with visual images of a particular type of human mind.
   Dan O'Bannon: No, more along these pictures out of this book. more of this Nubian black racial type. The thing we liked so much was the grace of these black people. Giger then came in and Giger has a feel for grace, but a different kind of grace. Giger loved grotesquery. So Giger started building up around this graceful figure, his pipes and tubes and running, rotting sores and joints and pustules and strange shapes and building it up and came up with something most bizarre. The plaster shop took a cast of the actor, full body cast and mounted it standing up on its toes on a wooden base and Giger put it into his studio and he began to build up on it with clay and bones, an air conditioning duct, screws and human skulls- the face of the thing is a real human skull. He took one of the human skulls and jammed it right on the front, rivited it in place, and then started modifying it. It was such a beautiful human skull, you know, it has been a real person, not like one of those plastic model kits - and he takes out his hack saw and he saws the jawbone off and extends the jawbone, like six inches, puts an extension in it, and creates the distorted jawbone! Then he starts attaching other fixtures to it and building a new extension on the back of it. He's doing this to a real human skull! (Fantastic Films # 10 (US), p14)
2. Dan O'Bannon: When he's finally got all done they took a cast of it, it was a craftsman who actually cast the rubber costume of Giger's sculpture. When they were finished casting in rubber he used his airbrush and painted the costume the same way he paints his paintings.
   Fantastic Films: Sounds hairy.
   O'Bannon:It's terrific , I've really got my fingers crossed. I truly believe that that monster in Alien is absolutely unique looking. I think that it is two strides beyond any monster costume in any movie ever before. And some of them are goodies, like  the Creature from the Black Lagoon, or This Island Earth, the bug with the exposed brain, some of those were terrific. I really think this is a step beyond. I don't think anybody's seen anything like this. (Fantastic Films # 10 (US), p14)
3. HR Giger Eddie worked on one hand of Alien III. He added another joint to the finger and made a pretty accurate copy of my design. Dan O'Bannon had the great idea of adding another thumb to the Alien.(28th July, HR Giger's Alien Diary)
4. HR Giger(3rd July 1978, Shepperton Studios) (:According to Carroll's timetable, already a week behind, the first polyester mould of the Alien's head and tongue, with a full-sized sectional plan of the head, is packed in a well padded case and sent to Carlo Rambaldi in Los Angeles. Rambaldi is a celebrated specialist in mechanization of artificial creatures in films. I suppose King Kong, for which he got an Oscar, is his most celebrated work. To make sure that at least that one example of the head will be mechanized in time, another model of it is entrusted to an engineer who has his workshop on the grounds of the Studios. (Giger's Alien, p60)
5. H R Giger(3rd July 1978, Shepperton Studios):After some discussion, a bit troublesome and nerve wracking at first, about how we should work and what materials we should use. Butler finally decides to work my way. These arguments have cost us valuable time. Since I have several other things going. I have to keep rushing from one studio to another. The production division keeps reminding us about which job is most urgent, so I can't get on with anything in peace. I begin modelling the body of the Alien on the mould of the actor. I arrange various technical pieces, as well as the ribs and spines of widely different animals, on a thin sheet of plasticine. I undertake to get one half of the monster ready so that Butler can do the other side. Our two man team is reinforced with the engagement of Andrew, who made the masks for Star Wars and is very experienced with working with all sorts of materials. He is sorting out the problem of how to make the costume transparent. (Giger's Alien, p60-62)
6. H R Giger (28th July 1978,, Shepperton Studios). At my insistence, two more women, Shirley and Patty, are taken on to help with the work of modelling the monster. Butler is busy making the cranium, which will give the Alien its final form. Andrew is to make it up later in transparent PVC by a special process. (Giger's Alien, p62)
7. H R Giger (3rd August, Shepperton Studios):At last we've got to the point where all the moulds needed for the Alien's costume are lying in the plasterers workshop. Since several casts will have to be made from each mould, the moulds have been made of a hard wearing silicon-rubber with a plastic sheath. Andrew keeps producing more and more experimental transparent costumes. However the ideal solution has still not been found, because the material is not resistant enough, and  tears. Andrew has built a special oven for this work in which the moulds rotate at a constant speed so that the liquid rubber is spread evenly. Unfortunately  he still hasn't produced anything we can use, and time is running short. (Giger's Alien, p62)
8. H R Giger (12th August, Shepperton Studios): Andrew has still not come up with satisfactory results. The moulds have been badly damaged by his experiments and by the great heat, and have to be repatched up by the plasterers in meticulous detail, or even made all over again.. The only conclusion that Andrew has reached is that what we want can only be done with metal moulds. We simply haven't got the time to make such things, and the Alien hysteria in the production department is reaching a climax. They have to start shooting very soon and we still haven't got a single costume that can be used. Time is too short for any more experiments and we decide to make the whole thing of latex. We finally have to give up our dream of a transparent Alien III. In the car park studio, Shirley, Patty and Butler are endlessly painting layers and layers of latex on the new models. Complete rubber moulds have got to be prepared in plaster as a result of the new method we've decided on, since plaster is more absorbent and can absorb water from the latex milk.(Giger's Alien, p66)
9. H R Giger (12th August, Shepperton Studios): Once again I'm deeply disappointed. They always told me we should have the best experts in the world with us in such a big production, and instead of that we've got a lot of do-it-yourself amateurs without the necessary experience.(Giger's Alien, p66) 
10. Ridley Scott: In those days I couldn't even get latex thin enough that wouldn't break , you know, quickly and would also take sculptural elements and sinew, because you've got to lay sinews into the rubber suit, so suddenly the rubber suit isn't  like, should have been as thin as a contraceptive and as strong as nylon , right, because then I can crush this person into the suit and have all kinds of things built and stitched into it. I need something extraordinarily thin because whatever we did, there was a certain man who was pretty thin, we put him in, it didn't look right. Funnily enough that week, one of the casting directors had been standing in a pub and stared at this guy who looked like, probably close to seven feet, right, and er, very slender, very thin, kind of elegant, erm,  and his name was Bolaji, so the guy had gone over to him in the pub and said, you know, the old line, "how would you like to be in the movies?" and the guy had a kind of North London accent and er, he was a graphic designer, and so he turned up, great, very bemused, curious and he was then attached to the film for the next ten months, and so he did all the stuff where he had to like, coming out of the wall in the shuttle (Alien Behind the scenes:  1:31:18)
11. DixiemePlanete Votre créature Alien devait à l'origine être translucide, ce qui ne fut pas le cas en définitive. En créant la Mutante, avez-vous voulu aller au bout de votre idée?
    HRGiger: Effectivement. L'AIien du premier film est devenu par la force des choses un personnage plus sombre en apparence. En fait, le costume devait à l'origine être moulé en caoutchouc semi-transparent mais les techniciens anglais n'ont pas été capables de reproduire ce que j'avais imaginé. En tant qu'artiste, j'en ai beaucoup souffert. Mais j'ai appris à relativiser, que pour travailler dans l'industrie cinématographique il faut faire des concessions, que je ne tolère pas lorsque je peins ou je sculpte pour moi. Pour le personnage de la Mutante, les gars des effets spéciaux ont utilisé des pièces moulées en plastique transparent formé à chaud sur des gabarits. Cela permettait de voir à travers les membres de la créature, dévoilant ainsi les muscles, les veines, etc. C'est ce que je voulais pour le premier Alien. Mais le latex utilisé ne donnait pas cet effet; il se déformait, perdait de sa transparence qui n'était déjà pas importante, d'autant que Badejo était noir ! On ne voyait plus rien ! La transparence joue également un rôle important dans les œufs d'Alien, et c'est ce que voulait Ridley Scott. Il les a placés à l'envers de manière à créer cet effet particulier. (DixiemePlanete #31)
    Translation: Dixieme Planete : Your Alien creature was originally to be translucent , which was not the case in the end. Creating the Mutant , have you wanted to follow your idea ?
    HR Giger: Actually. The AIien of the first film became by force of things a darker character in appearance. In fact, the costume was originally moulded in semi-transparent rubber but English technicians have not been able to reproduce what I had imagined. As an artist, I suffered a lot. But I've learned to put into perspective, that work in the film industry to make concessions, that I do not tolerate when I paint or I sculpt for me. For the character of Species, special effects guys have used parts molded in transparent plastic formed hot on templates. This allowed to see through the parts of the creature , revealing the muscles, veins , etc. . This is what I wanted for the first Alien . But the latex used did not give this effect , it is distorted , losing its transparency was already not important , especially as Badejo was black ! We saw nothing ! Transparency also plays an important role in the Alien eggs, and this is what Ridley Scott wanted . It was placed upside down in order to create this particular effect.