Origins of Carlos Huante's Babyhead

leading from
Babyhead

An interesting concept that came to the surface in the Prometheus concept designs was Carlos Huante's Babyhead. It was a favourite amongs the production staff on the set. Perhaps it also had a quality like Giger's Bambi Alien for Alien 3. However his concept for a Baby Head creature came about much earlier and came to the surface during in his concept work for the Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds released in 2005.  Of course once it was brought to Ridley Scott's notice, the concept was adapted for Prometheus with various changes made to the body

My route to discovering this fact was when in the Prometheus Blu-ray set, I was introduced to the image when  I saw when I saw a sketch of the H R Giger's rendition of the Babyhead creature for Ridley Scott, and then later in the DVD I saw a picture of the "babyhead" beast on the wall in the studio that turned out to be by Carlos Huante. I wondered which came first, Giger or Huante. It seemed likely though that Huante's image had been there before Giger's image was created. In Jaime Praeter/ThisBethesdaSea's interview with Carlos Huante for AVPGalaxy, it was revealed that the babyhead Shwa alien design already existed before Prometheus went into production and I wondered if this was from an earlier movie. Later on May 14th 2013 I discovered the image on Carlo Huante's website the concept design for Babyhead Shwa as it was for War of the Worlds and finding the name of the production was the discovery. Lars Vader then on the 15th showed me the image of the Babyhead image as posted on Carlos Huante's website.

drawing of the baby head by Carlos Huante posted on Facebook

War of the Worlds (2005) Shwa Babyhead concept by Carlos Huante.

Carlos Huante's Babyhead Shwa Alien concept for Prometheus

When Spielberg's movie came out, many viewers were not overly keen on the alien invaders as new designs because the shape of their skulls and their insect like limbs reminded them too much Patrick Tatopoulos' designs for the alien occupants of the biomechanoid suits from Independence day, which were designed as stereotypical Grey type aliens so again we find the designs leading back to Tatopoulos' designs from the movie Independence Day which came out around the same time that Ridley Scott claimed to have the idea of the Space Jockey with its head being entirely a space suit.  Also on the War of the Worlds aliens, we also the placement of the extra set of arms on the War of the Worlds alien creature bring one to remember the small extra arms on James Cameron' alien queen from Aliens. 

Digital model of War of the Worlds (2005) alien

Digital model of War of the Worlds(2005) alien

To some degree the alien invaders in their war machines were just a replay of Independence Day's alien creatures in their bio-suits which themselves were humanoid suits a inspired by the Martian War Machines of War of the World, but neither film could bare to claim that their aliens were from Mars now that the place seems very much dead according to NASA's discoveries.

Concept art for the War of the Worlds (2005) alien occupants (by Carlos Huante?)

Aliens life form from Independence Day (1996) Click here to read about Patrick Tatopoulos'design

However the tri-legs, one can take it either as directly assuming that the inhabitants build their war machines with three legs because they themselves had three legs or go back Nigel Kneales's film and TV series Quatermass and The Pit that happened to be a source of inspiration for Ridley Scott. In that story, the bodies of ancient Martian invaders had been discovered sealed up in a buried space capsule, which turned out to be insectoid about as small as these Martians but with three legs. In the original TV series they had three arms along with three legs, while in the film, they had two arms and three legs, but the writer of the series remained slightly unsure about where his need for the trilegged concept sprung from.

floating aliens bodies in preservation flasks from Independence Day (1996)

Tri-legged Martian from the TV series Quatermass and The Pit, 1958-59