Alien³ was a troubled production from beginning to end, and the creature effects department was no exception: the artists were plagued by constant changes in direction and contradicting studio decisions. Gillis recalled in an interview with Fangoria: “Fox never had a problem with coming back and saying ‘sorry guys. We know you built these things, but there’s… Read More StarBeast — Alien³, the Dragon
Alien³ underwent a long, articulated creation process — which saw several scriptwriters elaborating their own screenplays, only to be replaced — one after the other. Going from William Gibson to David Twohy, the film only began to develop to the next step with Vincent Ward and John Fasano’s script. It was based on that story that… Read More StarBeast — Alien³, the Beginning
A PIERCING SHRIEK fills the chamber. She turns. And there it is. A massive silhouette in the mist, the ALIEN QUEEN glowers over her eggs like a great, glistening black Insect-Buddha. What’s bigger and meaner than the Alien? His Momma. Her fanged head is an unimaginable horror. Her six limbs, the four arms, and two powerful… Read More StarBeast — Aliens, the Alien Queen
Hans Ruedi Giger, the original Alien designer, did not return to work on Aliens. None of the filmmakers involved in the project contacted the artist, whom at the time was attached as a creature designer to Poltergeist II. “we didn’t know exactly how long that commitment was, but we heard that he was busy,” director James Cameron… Read More StarBeast — Aliens
THE ALIEN, THIRD (MATURE) PHASE: Having left its victim, the Alien promptly grows to man-size, whereupon it is terrifically dangerous. It is very mobile, strong, and capable of tearing a man to pieces. It feeds on human flesh. This creature should be a profane abomination. Our producers have suggested that something resembling an over-sized, deformed… Read More StarBeast — Alien
THE ALIEN, SECOND PHASE: Once the Alien (First Phase) has attached itself to the face of a victim, it lays eggs in the victim’s stomach, and the egg grows into the Alien (Second Phase). This is a small creature which bites its way out of the victim’s body. -Dan O’Bannon, original letter to H.R. Giger… Read More StarBeast — Alien, the Chestburster
When Hans Ruedi Giger was finally hired as a designer for Alien, he was assigned the task to conceive all the otheworldly aspects of the film — the planetoid, the Derelict and its Pilot, and the Alien itself in all of the stages of its life cycle. Obviously unable to also construct all the needed… Read More StarBeast — Alien, the Egg and the Facehugger
The Alien story begins with Dan O’Bannon, a Hollywood writer with a taste for Lovecraft and the sci-fi of old. It was during the pre-production of the ill-fated Dune directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky that O’Bannon had a fateful meeting: a Swiss surreal artist by the name of Hans Ruedi Giger. Giger had been hired by… Read More StarBeast — Prologue: Alien, Dan O’Bannon’s Cosmic Horror
El Laberinto del Fauno (inappropriately translated overseas as Pan’s Labyrinth) was independently written, produced and directed by Guillermo del Toro, with a budget of approximately 16 million dollars. The film’s effects were created by Everett Burrell’s CafeFX — which animated the digital effects — and David Marti’s DDT Efectos Speciales — which built the extensive… Read More Las Criaturas del Laberinto del Fauno
In the late 80s, Raffaella de Laurentiis began proposing to various Studio Executives her pet project — a fantasy film set in the 10th century, about the unlikely alliance between a Dragon and a Knight. Written by Charles Edward Pogue and based on a story by Pogue and Patrick Read Johnson, Dragonheart was a project that for… Read More Draco
