Oct 28, 2014 6:30 AM

Gallery: Never-Before-Seen Sketches That Inspired the Birth of Alien

TM & © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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While working on *Dune*, Giger painted this concept of Harkonnen Castle with an eerie elongated carapace. He incorporated that design into the Alien's skull—though the eye sockets ultimately disappeared.
TM & © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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Mike Worrall produced this 1990 concept drawing of the xenomorph for *Alien3*.

TM & © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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Chris Foss, who also worked on *Dune*, made this early illustration of the doomed ship *Nostromo* pulling a massive asteroid with a built-in refinery. Elements of Foss' rendition and an illustration by Ron Cobb both inspired the design.
TM & © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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Director Ridley Scott, known for exhaustively storyboarding his films, produced *Alien*'s “Ridleygrams” in three weeks. This one featured the alien ship with the fossilized Space Jockey in the pilot seat—a plot point Scott returned to in 2012's *Prometheus*.

TM & © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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The filmmakers wove sexual imagery aplenty into the Alien's design—that double mouth begs for a Freudian read—but the facehugger was even more blatant. O'Bannon pitched the octopus-like foundation; Giger added the fingers and terrifying (but later scrapped) eyeball.
TM & © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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Concept art of the "wooden planet," the setting for *Alien 3* as envisioned by the film's original director, Vincent Ward. (David Fincher later replaced Ward as director---*Alien 3* was his first feature.)

TM & © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
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A concept illustration of the derelict ship and and the crash site from the original *Alien*.

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