An intermediary stage

leading from

Ridley Scott's Alien Monster 

a) Ridley at an AFI Q&A spoke and about an intermediary stage of the alien, to give an idea about how in its life cycle, it would turn into something the size of the final alien creature. He described a black egg shaped form with legs that unfolds which he never quite got around to do.

b) With the mention of some sort of compact shape and the alien unfolding, some might want to cast their minds back to the scene in the Alien comic book which showed in a corridor the alien squashed into a box shape when Ripley is trying to get to the shuttle and finds it between her and the shuttle, and this creature unfolds until it's standing as the tall adult creature. Were the two concepts one and the same or just similar?

c) See also: The Alien as a folded up box

Source quote

1. Ridley: You've got the beast, and then, but then you've got to go back to the egg. Out of the egg comes what, what we call the facehugger, and then from the facehugger you move to the chest burster, and the chestburster I want, I've always wanted an intermediary stage, a rather obscure thing that we would see on internal cameras, like CDC cameras in the corridors seeing this funny thing, it's like a black egg wandering around, like on feet, and then see it unfold. We, we never got to do that because the bomb was breathing down my neck, and so you've got yer four evolutions.  (Ridley Scott in an AFI Q & A)

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David Watling's Alien Head

leading from 

creating the Alien

a) David Watling who created the remote controlled R2-D2 from Alien was responsible for  creating a backup version of the alien head just in case Rambaldi's alien head wasn't able to deliver. Although it was a very clever machine, Ivor Powell felt that it wasn't something they'd need because Rambaldi's head was just what they wanted for the closeup shots and a lot safer to use as it was manually operated.

b) However Giger found this becoming an issue for emerging studio politics as the production manager who appeared to Giger to be an ardent nationalist, although back in the seventies there was still quite a call to "Buy British",  and indeed there were people were keen to keep Alien as a British project rather than unneccesarily outsourcing to foreign companies. So it seemed that the production manager wanted to push for the use of the British made alien head instead of the ones made by Rambaldi which was considered an Italo-American product, he offer Giger his support if he'd push for the use of David Watlings alien head which apparently Giger found didn't work very well and of course he found himself more impressed with Rambaldi's creation.

Source Quote

1. Cinefex: When Rambaldi labored some seven thousand miles away, the producers commissioned David Watling to construct yet another head, identical in appearance and function, as a hedge against the possibility that Rambaldi's would not work satisfactorily or he would be unable to deliver in time. Watling whose engineering firm on the Shepperton lot had manufactured the seven R2-D2 units used in Star Wars, approached his tasking somewhat differently, however((Alien The Special Effects, p20, Titan Books,  and Cinefex 1)
2. David Watling: Our brief was to articulate the head with the same movements as the one Rambaldi was making, buy by using a radio control system rather than cables. We therefore designed and built remote control devices which gave full proportional control to the lips and the position of the inner teeth mounted on the tongue. The main jaw and tongue were activated by air cylinders which in turn were controlled by radio vaves operated by the air supply and a miniature battery pack were mounted in the costume on the actor's back. (Alien The Special Effects, p20, Titan Books,  and Cinefex 1)
3. Cinefex: The alien head constructed by David Watling's firm was virtually identical in appearance; and even though it had been completed and delivered more than a month before Rambaldi's, it was never used in the film. (Alien The Special Effects, p28, Titan Books,  and Cinefex 1)
4. Ivor Powell:' David Watling's machine was very clever, but ironically , we never used it because there was no call to use it. Most of the shooting was finally done pretty close up, and therefore the cable system of Rambaldi's was much more practical. Remote control just isn't as subtle as a hand-operated mechanism. If we'd wanted a lot of long shots, though - with freedom from the cables - the Watling head would have been very useful.(Alien The Special Effects, p28, Titan Books,  and Cinefex 1)
5. H. R. Giger (30th August 1978, Shepperton Studios): The production manager (Garth Thomas was production manager at the time) who is an ardent nationalist, finds these Italo-American products a thorn in the flesh. He promises me all possible support in my work if I will boost the homemade product, the engineer's Alien head that only half works, for use in the film. I wont do anything of the sort. I'm only interested in quality, no matter where it comes from, and in the resemblance of the head to my own design; not in this internal nepotism. (Giger's Alien, p70)

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The Development of Necronom IV

leading from 

Alien: Afterworlds of thought
and
Development of Giger's art

1) Necronom's development via "Swiss Made" and modern artists
i) The starting point at Swiss Made 2068
ii) Elongated Skull Apparitions by way of Salvador Dali
iii) Elongated head apparitions by way of Ernst Fuchs
iv) Spectres of Necronom IV's development in Friedrich Kuhn II
v) Giger's reflections on Necronom IV

2) Necronom IV inspired by Ancient Egyptian art:
i) The Embalming Ritual
ii) The Necronom's Leonine shoulder

iii) Vestigial remains of the Eye of Horus

iv) Was-Sceptre, the head of the alien?

3)  Alien head as the Corpus Caleosum of the human brain

4) In the Shadow of the Babylonian Pazuzu

5) The naming of the Necronom series

6) See also Necronom V: Biomechanised Pakal Votan Tomb Lid.?

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The starting point at Swiss Made 2068

Swiss Made 2068

(part of: The Development of Necronom IV )

In 1968, Giger created a suit for a biomechanoid humanoid for Freddy Murer's short film Swiss Made 2068,(see photos above left and right)  to be worn by a human. This was Giger's first movie monster and it featured a movie camera mounted into the front of the head of the creature replacing the face. He also created a biomechanoid shell for a small dog to wear as well to go with this suit.


Giger: The painting Necronom 4 which would later become the Alien or part of it. it came about partly through a monster which I had already created before for a half-hour film called Swiss Made

Swiss Made 2068

by Freddie Murer. For that film I created a first extraterrestrial in three dimensions. That was a figure that already had a long head with a long occiput and one eye was the camera and on its chest there were two spools of tape and from that there was a kind of microphone to pull out or a kind of pull out stand. And the whole figure was made from polyester, it was it was kind of boney and black, like some kind of armour which merged with the trunk and the arms and legs and a belly they were in a kind of black leather, they were kind of quilted like for example let's say like you use for ice hockey where you have these sausages which they make so that you can bend the arms and legs and you are at the same time protected from the puck, from any hard shots of anything like, and in that of style I created this extra terrestrial.  At the same time I created a dog for this film. Unfortunately it disappeared, Dali wanted to have it and I sent it off and it disappeared. (From a report of what Giger said in his interview with Alien Evolution)

Woman with Child, 1967

The creature was inspired by the head of his female biomechanoid in the drawing Woman with Child from 1967. The main humanoid head has a mechanical viewing device projecting about a foot ahead of the face of the humanoid and the back of the head is similar in shape as well.

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Elongated Skull Apparitions by way of Dali

leading from

The Development of Necronom IV
and
Salvador Dali

a)The Running Influence of Salvador Dali
In 1972 Salvador Dali composed the sketch Nefertiti in 1972, Giger admitted that it was the sort of work of Dali that had inspired him but couldn't specify that this was something in particular. I bought a copy of the book "Dali" by Ramon Gomez De La Serna back in the early 1990s, Dali had drawn the picture as one of the illustrations to accompany Ramon Gomez De La Serna's essay about him and through the decades I wondered how it might relate to Giger's inspiration for the Alien beast although it was quite possible that Giger found his own way to drawing these elongated craniums without specifically trying to copy Dali since Giger has shown an interest in Egyptian art since he was a young boy anyway.

"Nefertiti" by Salvador Dali, 1972
(AKA by some Alien fans as "The dAlien")

In Giger's Necronomicon published in 1977 he talked about how he was able to meet Salvador Dali at Cadaques  in 1975 with the help his artist friend Robert Venosa, which led to Giger participating in the preproduction of Alexandro Jodorowsky's ill fated film project Dune.



b) In Landscape XVI painted in 1972 (work 209), we find elongated skeletal heads with translucent skulls developing.

detail from
"Landscape XVI", 1972

c) In 1975, Giger painted Biomechanoid, (work 267) the head is an elongated skull with a translucent skin showing the nearly bare bone beneath and along the side we see the organic pipe or bar perhaps formed from bone that we will see on the head of the creature in the  Necronom IV painting.

Biomechanoid , (work 267) 197

d) see also Giger On Dali

 

Source quotes

1.  In 2009, at AlienExperience.com, Dennis Lowe the documentary maker and former Alien special effects technician, was taking questions because he was to film an interview that he was to record with H.R.Giger in Switzerland.
   
   I put forth a question to be asked about this "Dalien"  on December 12th 2009. "What brought you to start painting elongated skulls? Was a Dali's sketch of a female with a skull face and an elongated skull for 1972 for a biographical essay by Ramon Gomez De La Serna something that might have inspired you? "  My following statement on the 13th looking at Giger's possible response was: "Well one thing, Giger is going to admit Dali's influence in general, and it might be too much to expect him to have known about that "Dalien" image back then, but it would be fun if he knew about it one way or the other"
   
   Sebastien from Alienexperience.com in December 14,2009 who accompanied Dennis Lowe, having just come back home to Sweden from Switzerland said "We talked a bit off the record about the Dalien (I showed him that picture) but it was difficult trying to get the right answers you were looking for due to his limitation in English. However he did say it was a very wonderful image and that it's impossible not to be influenced by Dali - but he meant that more in general rather than just the Alien design itself." Giger's response was absolutely fine by me.

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Elongated head apparitions by way of Ernst Fuchs

leading from

The Development of Necronom IV

a) Ernst Fuchs, one of the founders of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, a painter well known to H R Giger painted during the 1950s, works such as Behind Veronica's Cloth from 1953 amd The Angel Of Death Over Purgatory, the latter painted from 1951 to 1956. He was a great inspiration to Giger. Exactly which year Giger first found out about his work is another question.

H.R Giger and Ernst Fuchs
source: www.hrgigermuseum.com/

b) In my journey of discovering the essence of the design of Necronom IV, I had discovered the basis of what there was to know about the inspiration coming from ancient Egyptian art and so the next assumption that I had was that maybe there was something in the work of Alfred Kubin or Ernst Fuchs that might have supplied a starting point for a strange monstrous creature with an elongated head, perhaps it was a fish with long spindly limbs somewhere in a Kubin drawing but I could find nothing and I didn't exactly know where to begin with Ernst Fuchs since there was so little of his work on the internet. However to cut the journey short, on 11th of June 2012, someone with the username of "egoc" gave me the lead to Ernst Fuchs work from a certain period that provided a likely starting point as seen below.

c) In the first painting is a strange figure in the lower left side with one leg kneeling on the ground and holding a gun, it features a strange elongated head and a very curious front of the head with a domed forehead (however at this moment I don't have a good photograph of this image to see it in any particular detail, nothing is available on the internet). The stick like quality of the figure is almost reminiscent of perhaps the physique of the Massai tribesmen well known later in the 1970s when Leni Riefenstahl published a book of photographs of these kinds of tribesment and in the end, Ridley Scott found a member of that race to perform the role of the alien in the suit.

Behind Veronicas's cloth by Ernst Fuchs

Behind Veronicas's cloth by Ernst Fuchs (detail)

d) The second painting , The Angel Of Death Over Purgatory, features a similar figure filling the picture but as the main subject of the painting. A winged figure with a stick like body has a head like a horizontal stick with a humanoid head on the tip pointing towards the left.

The Angel Of Death Over Purgatory,
from 1951 to 1956,
by Ernst Fuchs

The Angel Of Death Over Purgatory,
from 1951 to 1956,
by Ernst Fuch (detail)

e) The third, a drawing, "Vision" from 1953 features in the upper right a profile of a human face growing from an elongated trunk, perhaps a very large fingertip. Above the head as with the previous image is  Bishop's mitre as a reoccurring image

Ernst Fuchs "Vision" 1953
( for the detailed image, thank to 
http://dolorosa-reveries.blogspot.co.uk)

heads from Ernst Fuch's "Vision 1953"

face from Ernst Fuch's "Vision", 1953

Source Quotes

1. Giger: I would have to say that Ernst Fuchs has been my greatest and deepest inspiration and that he is the greatest artist alive today. And as a technician he is absolutely fantastic. He knows his materials inside and out. If I had seen his work when I was young, I would never have begun to paint myself. He is a master and is a close friend of mine, I am happy to say" (Esoterra #9, Baphomet's lament: An interview with H.R. Giger by R.F.Paul, 2000 )

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Biomechanised Friedrich Kuhn photo reveals further spectres

leading from 
The development of Gigers art 
 and

The Development of Necronom IV

the starting point, a photograph of Friedrich Kuhn in his studio, 1972
(source; http://www.kultur-online.net/?q=node/6192)
Also found in HR Giger's Necronomicon, p54

a) Photo of Friedrick Kuhn transformed by biomechanisation into Friedrick Kuhn 1
In the original photograph of Friedrich Kuhn's studio, we see a strange seated figure and a model of a palm tree . In Friedrich Kuhn I , seated figure at the back has been erased and perhaps repainted to the left side as a humanoid with an animal roughly like a deer and the tree form has become biomechanised. To the right behind the chair, there is a mask mounted on a rectangular has become a man's face with wide circular spectacles. The easel in the background has become a sort of a crucific

 Friedrich Kuhn I (1973?) photogravure.

b)  Friedrich Kuhn photo by further biomechanisation of transformed into Friedrich Kuhn II
In the painting Friedrich Kuhn II, (1973)  Giger had turned the humanoid figure seated in the background into the biomechanoid robot outfit that he created for the movie Swiss Made, and here he further develops the image of the suit armour in the short film to become more like one of his stylised biomechanoid images and holding a phallic rod in it's visible hand. Behind the settee on the left, Giger has painted a sphinx like female biomechanoid with an elongated skull translucent skull with a pipe running along the side of it and this image would later as an idea would appear to be developed into the female biomechanoid rider in the painting Necronom V which is one of the series of paintings that inspired the final form of the Alien "big chap".  In Friedrich Kuhn II, the female has eyes and a skeletal face with a gap where the nose would be, but the eyes and face are covered over by the dome in Necronom V to make her seem blind. The mask to the right behind the settee becomes now the face of a beautiful biomechanoid woman complete with body.

Friedrich Kuhn II (1973) photogravure.

comparison between costume and figure in a detail from Friedrich Kuhn 2 painting

female figure with elongated Alien type head from Friedrich Kuhn II painting

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