The design of the Alien had been different in every movie, and the only time it did not get a complete makeover from scratch and the design was actually cast from the original was in Aliens, although feet and hands were redesigned. I did an article on how little difference there is between the first two on JamesCameronOnline about 15 years ago, but since then lots of better reference photos surfaced, and some good quality pics of the actual props came out as well, and I also think the article could use more elaboration. Since it isn't easy to alter the old JamesCameronOnline articles and requires painstaking work with formatting, I figured I may just do an updated version here and include Alien 3's Runner as well. It's just more interesting to compare the Aliens from the first two movies, because they're so alike, it's more fun to pick the minutia differences and show each body part side by side to shows how identical they are, while any Alien made later was redesigned from scratch.
For the comparisons, I'll be only using photos of the actual suits and props from the movie - photos of the screen-used props from official confirmed auctions (Namely Propstore - site auctioning movie props directly from the people who were involved in the production of the films), museums and set/workshop photography from the production. There are many figures and replicas and busts, and they're never 100% accurate, so we'll be using only photos of the real thing.
I. HEAD
Before we start the visual guide to Alien designs and start discussing what was under the original's dome, I just want to point out something that seems to be forgotten with time with the dome - that the original Alien's dome on the front was not all smooth and rounded. the front consisted of two bulges joint together. Originally there was suppose to be another part in between them as you can see in Giger's artwork (Picture below Giger's lesser known Alien art and the original suit made by Giger in Giger's Museum)
Giger did something very similar with the Nightmare Train from 1995's Species
Also, if you never read a single book on making of the movie, and never watched a single dvd/bluray extra or any “Making of” Documentary, there’s a little bit of info on the Alien’s head I need to explain so that later in the article you know what or who am I talking about. H. R Giger sculpted and finished the Alien head yes, but he wasn’t a special effects person who could make it articulate. For that, an Italian special FX man Carlo Rambaldi was hired, who was then most known for 1976’s King Kong and would later do E.T. Giger sent him his head from which he made the cast and created several articulated, cable operated and stunt heads. The only difference is slightly in paintjob and the mouth is a bit, as Giger put it, ape-like. In case Rambaldi’s head failed, Dave Waitling, who created R2D2 for 1977’s Star Wars was tasked to create a radio operated articulated head, which was identical to the main Rambaldi’s head. Rambaldi also created two different types of stunt heads other than the hero head, and one of the stunt heads, even thought shorter in lenght, was actually the closest to Giger's head out of all of them, with the look of the skull and the much more angled teeth. So that’s all to give you a background on what Giger’s, Rambaldi’s and Waitling’s heads are (Photos below from Alien model maker Martin Bower of Rambaldi's props at Bray Studios, photos of Giger's head below from Making of Alien book and Cinefantastique magazine)
Now let's move on to the design evolution.
Aliens' Warrior is the most alike the original by miles, and Giger's design was changed the least (out of all existing movies) - the body is completely untouched, and the identical ribs of the Warriors's head were already there on the original Alien (the head was also cast off the original), just covered by a dome that was supposed to be transparent, but the idea is barely visible onscreen.
There were two different domes made, one almost clear for certain scenes and one dark. (Photos below of Rambaldi’s heads taken at the model shop by model maker Martin Bower. Some of these were published in Alien Archives book)
You can see the two versions side by side in this picture
Here's a photoshoot of Bolaji Badejo as Alien with the clear dome
And here are some shots from a photoshoot of Badejo in the dark dome
Below, a recent photo of one of the original screen used heads from 1979 Alien, sans the dome, on display in Academy Museum of Motion Pictures in Los Angeles
And here you can see some of very few frames in the 1979's Alien that reveal the ribbed head with a mohawk-like row of bones.
Pictured below, the Alien without and with the cowl, which covered fantastic ribbed design underneath. (Photo Source: Alien Quadrilogy DVD set)
Here's H.R.Giger working on the head sans the cowl, with airbrushed ribs and spine-like mohawk (Photo source Alien Quadrilogy DVD set)
The thing was, the Warrior's body and head was Giger's design, cast directly from the original, with eyes and nose sockets covered on the skull face. The Winston Studios team was excited to receive and study the original costume, and they were a bit surprised that Giger used the actual plumbing supplies in its construction.
Shane Mahan (Stan Winston Sculptor): “Our shop used to be on Parthenia Street,” explained Winston employee Shane Mahan, “and Stan says, ‘Look, there’s a big crate coming from London, about the size of a coffin and when it comes in, we have got to take a look at what is inside.’ … Fox had sent us the original suit … we uncrated it and of course the horrible smell of decaying rubber and sweat and all of that came pouring out, but there at the bottom of this thing were all of the components to what Giger had built. It was ratty and a bit torn up, but it was like, ‘There it is! There’s the monster right there!’ It was astonishing (Winston Effect book)
Below, photo of John Rosengrant of Stan Winston Studio working on the Alien Queen torso, but to the right in the background, there's the lower half of the original Alien costume being cast. See the enhanced photo from Tom Woodruff Jr's (Former Stan Winston Studio sculptor) instagram
Aliens' Alien Warriors were also the last biomechanical Aliens as well, as all the biomechanicality has been stripped from the Alien design in Alien 3. For those who aren't into it all for decades, what is biomechanicality? H.R. Giger's artwork was pretty much dark and grey depictions of rotting corpses fused with industrial machinery parts and both male and female private parts. The original Alien had all of those signature elements. It was a charred skeleton permeated by electrical and plumbing parts like cables, tubes, screws and predominantly flexible ribbed tubes. Many parts still had serial number on them when the suit was studied years later for the sequel. It also had male and female parts sculpted in its crotch and abdomen. So Giger's Biomechanicality was a fusion of a skeleton or decaying body with mechanical parts.
H.R.Giger: "My style of painting is a combination of art and technical stuff. I call it biomechanics - kind of a surrealist mixture of biology and technology and I wanted the Alien to have those same qualities"
"We kept the design more or less the same what H.R. Giger designed for the one alien that they had in 'Alien', the full sized adult version, of which we had many" - James Cameron (Don Shay int. 1986)
They're (aliens) mainly a reprise of Mr. Giger's design" - James Cameron, lofficcier.com
"It's evident that the makers of the sequel had a great respect for the original Alien which Winston himself remembers as "the best horror movie of the decade". For this reason, the design concepts for the facehugger, the chestburster and the warrior aliens remain relatively unchanged" - Galactic Journal magazine #21 1986
So let's start with the head while we're at it. The head was cast from the original, so it's identical. The eye sockets and nose hole were covered (Photo source Stan Winston Studios)
The noticeable difference is of course, no cowl. But why there was no cowl for the sequel? For some reason, a little assumption from someone who didn't work on the Alien Creatures themselves (Alec Gillis, at the time new employee of Winston Studios) got the most traction online and is cited as the reason - and that is that Cameron didn't want to risk the cowl breaking. First of all, for anyone who knows James Cameron, knows this man is an inventor who designs first then helps to invent techniques if they don't exist to get it. It's not someone who would completely alter the design for technical reasons - after all, the Alien suits were made of different material to allow the same design but more mobility. You want to tell me that the guy who pushed the envelope in movie industry multiple times with technology to achieve the unachievable, who pumped his own money in the movie Aliens into the budget to create an opening scene he wanted but there was no budget for, (and gave up all of his salary for Titanic's budget and some points, and paid out of his own pocket in numerous of his films), would compromise the look of a titular character of his passion project because a part could crack? Really?
Second, even if you don't know anything about James Cameron, you'd realize it makes no sense - the original costume had mass of problems - the performers were passing out in it, it restricted the movements terribly (which actually the movie benefitted from as they had to invent slow but eerie movements to make up for the fact you couldn't do much in the suit), it kept breaking and ripping, the tail kept falling off, but there was never a problem with a an actual cowl, not on the first film, not on any other.
Third, the originator of that rumor, Alec Gillis, also incorrectly stated that Giger created the back pipes on the alien to break human form, but that's incorrect because the pipes were there from the very beginning on the creature in Giger's 1976 painting that was an inspiration for the Alien.
Fourth: Wouldn't you think he would mention ditching the cowl for that reason in the designing/pre-production and preliminary meetings? Not when the cowls were already done on the finished heads? Especially at the time when they were deciding on which materials to use for the updated aliens? Nothing makes sense with that claim.
The actual reason, confirmed by Jim Cameron is that he really liked the designs underneath the cowl once he saw them in person and didn't want to cover them
James Cameron: "The Alien head in the first film was very smooth. The top of the head was very smooth. Underneath it had a skull shape and a ribbed design and originally it was designed to see that through that kind of transparent surface in the Giger design. I thought that what was underneath the surface was more interesting than the final look" - (Aliens Collector's Edition Commentary 2003)
James Cameron: "“We planned to [have a domed head] with ours and to that end Stan Winston had Tom Woodruff sculpt up a ribbed, bone-like understructure that would fit underneath and be slightly visible through the cowl. When it was finished, they gave it a real nice paint job, and then I took a look at it and I said, ‘Hey, this looks much more interesting the way it is.’ So we ditched the cowl and decided that this was just another generation of Aliens – slightly mutated.'”(Cinefex Magazine 1986)
Shane Mahan (one of the original Winston Studios artists, also sculptor of the Terminator endoskull and the Alien Queen head): We tried to recreate the original Giger look and we were so proud of it, we were like 'yeah that looks so clear and cool', he's (Cameron) like 'Take that off' (Superior Firepower Documentary)
Tom Woodruff (Former Winston employee, sculpted the actual Warrior heads with John Rosengrant): "The reason I remember being was he didn't want a nice big smooth surface that wouldn't really work with the harsh lighting he was choosing and he wanted to be able to see the shapes of the head underneath as it moved between light and shadow" (Alien The Archive Book)
But you didn't have to wait for DVD Commentary or Books to know that, it was already stated in the Cinefex magazine when the movie came out and on Laserdisc extras
The inferred explanation in the movie is that the Aliens lose their domes with age, as those aliens were around longer than the original. Not only that, but the chestburster in Aliens clearly has a smooth head, so logical extrapolation from that is that if the young larvas are shown with smooth head and the adults that are around for weeks don't have the cowl, it either falls off or molts into the head. James Cameron agrees with that assumption made by a reader in a letter to Starlog magazine, saying "Yes, the design of the warrior adult was altered slightly. [The reader's] rationale for this is as good as mine, that the individual in Alien never reached maturity"
All those things have been officially confirmed on Aliens Laserdisc extras, which are also available on a special disc that contains all Laserdisc features on Alien Anthology BluRay set. Screenshot from Laserdisc below
Here's a comparison between the cable operated Alien head from 1979 without the cowl on and the Alien Warrior head from 1986's Aliens. Note the same bony mohawk, and the identical ribs. The difference here again is in the material not the design - the original had the ribs airbrushed, while Cameron's had them sculpted.
Comparison below between unfinished Carlo Rambaldi’s 1979 head at the model shop, which was the head used for the articulated closeups in the film (Photographed by Alien model maker Martin Bower; partial photo published in Alien Archive book, full photo included in Alien Anthology Bluray set) and the photo of the Warrior head from Anthology extras. Chosen for the best angle match
And another comparison with the Rambaldi head. The Warrior teeth do seem to match the stunt head more than the other heads', with the more angled upper set of teeth. The photo on the top is that of Rambaldi's head from Alien Laserdisc extras, the two small inserts are of the stunt head for teeth comparison, also originating from Laserdisc extras (One of them is also available on Alien Anthology Bluray Set Archives disc). You can also notice a much slimmer jawline on the Warrior, which is actually exactly the same as on the stunt head.
Winston Team had access to both Giger and stunt heads as shown on the Aliens Laserdisc extras. With the teeth and the jawline being a perfect match as well as the shape of the temporals, I think it’s safe to say they used the stunt head’s front for the Warriors, perhaps because it looked more aggressive, more like a Beast, and was closer to Giger’s sculpt. Screenshots below from Aliens Laserdisc extras also included in Alien Anthology Bluray Archives
As a side note, note the eyeball in the Giger head in the screenshot above. Giger's head came from Fox with eyeballs, either put there as a goof at the end of the shoot (most likely) or those who shipped it thought they were missing them and put them there. Below a photo of the original 1979 head as it arrived for the Winston Studio team. Note the eyeballs inside (Photo from Alien Anthology Bluray set)
Going back to the comparison. Here's another one from another angle (Photos from Alien Anthology and Stan Winston Studio)
The photo above is showing a yet unpainted head of a Warrior. Warriors had two color schemes - some were a mix of strong brown highlights and bone color, some had delicate brown highlights and light blue accents (Photos from Alien Anthology and Stan Winston Studio)
Note the "donuts" between the ribs on the original as well. Again, airbrushed in the original, three-dimensional in the second. ( Photo: Rambaldi head taken by Martin Bowers)
The head ribs were slightly different on every head in the original film. Dave Waitling's were basically identical to Giger's - an airbrushed thin bone, however they changed direction/angle. Carlo Rambaldi's were similar but lost that narrow bone look, while the stunt suit version 1 simplified it completely and was least alike (version 2 for more extreme stunts didn't have them). The same stunt head ribs shape was later applied to the hero head for the official photoshoot for some reason. Either the original airbrush had worned off, or didn't show much, and thicker, more squared design was applied. Warriors' head ribs were identical to Giger's (but again, sculpted instead of airbrushed) (Photo Below H. R. Giger holding his Alien head)
One small alteration to a little piece is that a metal plumbing diverter that is connected to other metal parts is made out of bone in Warriors, rather than being an actual plumbing connection. (Comparison between the 1979 Alien David Waitling head and Auctioned off Warrior head)
Even the back of the head is unchanged and retains the same split zipper design (Photos from Alien Anthology)
Staying on the head, let's look at those small tweaks to the face, which is a slightly more skeletal look and more details on the chin. (Photos from Giger's Museum and Stan Winston Studio)
Interestingly enough, the detail added can be seen in at least two of Giger's paintings, Necronom II and an actual painting of the Alien monster from 1976
But they weren't an original addition. If you look at the screen used head for the original movie, you'll see that those two splotches on the chin were airbrushed on the original Alien, just covered up. Also note the eye shaped translucent lips on the original - while the Warrior’s retained the translucent lips they didn’t have the eye shape (Photos below from left to right: Rambaldi’s head at the model shop published in Alien Archive book, David Waitling’s Auctioned off head in the center, Giger’s head from Bolaji Badejo Photosession)
II. NECK
Moving on to the neck. Now the neck is one of those things that were indeed redesigned in order to get one step away from the man-in-the-suit look. "Then there were the fully grown warrior aliens that Winston wanted to move away from "the man in a costume" look of the original" - Cinescape magazine
The original neck was human shaped with some of the grill design on them. The neck of the Warriors changes the shape to something inhuman, and uses grilled patterns to fit the designs (Photos below of auctioned off screen used costume parts)
The way the neck connected to the jaw of the original Alien kind of made it look like the original had a bit of a toad neck because the jaw line was getting lost in it, if you look back at the screenshot at the top. It was streamlined for the Warriors. (Behind the scenes Alien photo on the left and Stan Winston Studio photo on the right)
III. TORSO
Now the body comparison of the Alien from both films. Since it was cast off the original, it's identical, to the last detail. The material used is different, but the design and every part is identical. The original was made from rubber with highly detailed finish, while Aliens' costumes were simple leotards with glued plastic pieces. The reason behind it was that in Aliens , the aliens were never meant to be shown onscreen other than as shadows, silhouettes or in split second flashes.
All the parts, screws and plumbing parts, it's all there, Giger's masterpiece in all its glory. I love that design. Below, the Alien and Aliens costumes as they appear today - the '79 costume is in H.R.Giger's Museum, and the '86 Warrior suit has been sold at the auction by the largest official dealer of movie memorabilia, Propstore.
And this is how the suits looked originally during production. On the left, Bolaji Badejo, one of the actors who portrayed the original Alien, to the right, Alien Warrior suits. (Photo on the left of Bolaji Badejo in promotional photosession, photo at the right from Stan Winston Studios included in Alien Anthology set and Alien Archive book)
Notice that everything looks like made of bone on both designs, and the torso sort of looks like skeletal life vest made out of bone. Note the incredible biomech details on the chest - the ribbed tubing going halfway down, the metal pieces. (Photos: Bolaji Badejo Alien photoshoot and Auctioned off Warrior suit)
The one small alteration is in the puppets. Since they were 8 feet tall, it looked disproportional with that number of ribs so two extra pairs are added to the puppets (Photo from Stan Winston Studios published in Aliens Set Photography book)
The shoulder appendages remain untouched as well, here's a closeup if it wasn't clear in the previous photos. It’s a slightly different angle but gets the point across (Photos of the auctioned off suits of the original left and Warrior right)
But my favorite area is the abdomen. That area is the quintessential Giger work - There's an area in the crotch that you could call a stylized vagina, but there's also a big stylized penis on the abdomen, and it's all in Giger's trademark style, all augmented with his biomechanicality - plumbing parts, caps, tubing. Again, no changes here. (Photos: Giger Museum original suit left, Auctioned off Warrior suit right)
The back is untouched as well. The only different thing is the placement of the back pipes. They were much lower on the original Alien, further away from the "fishtail". Also note the addition of bones to the back of the neck of the Warriors. (Photos: Left Alien ‘79 photoshoot, Right Warrior Puppet from Aliens Laserdisc Archives also available on Alien Anthology)
IV. FEET
Going down to the feet, we stumble upon one of only three redesigns (First one already covered is the neck). Feet also fell into the category of body parts that give away the man-in-a-suit look, but this is one redesign which I'm not that crazy about because the original feet were graceful, female. It was art. The Warrior feet are simply monster feet (Photos: Giger museum top, auctioned off suit and Alien Anthology photo below)
V. HAND AND ARMS
Now let's look at the arms. With arms it's tricky because puppets have different arms than the suits. The suits (Photos: Original suit at Giger’s Museum and Auctioned off Warrior suit. Below, Alien ‘79 photoshoot with Badejo and Giger and Stan Winston Studios photo)
Now, the puppets had different forearms, much more creature like and so skinny it would be impossible for a human hand to fit in, so puppets made it possible to create those inhuman arms. They're very skinny and still have those vents-like designs on them, and I do believe it aided very much in getting away from the "man in a suit" look, since it broke up the human proportions. They tried to elongate the arms as much as possible in the original, this is taking it a step further.
(Photos: Alien promo shot aboard Narcissus, Warrior puppet from Laserdisc Archives and Stan Winston Studios)
The elbow appendage is another element that either changed or didn't, depending whether it's a puppet or not. In puppets, the spiky protrusion is pretty much unchanged. You can barely see it in the photo above and compare it with the original below. But in another bid to break away from the main-in-the-suit look, the appendages, which would naturally grow with time, are much bigger and grown into blades in the stunt suits. (Photos: ‘79 promo shoot with Bolaji Badejo and auctioned off Warrior suit)
The hands themselves are that third element that got a complete redesign. With Winston and his team trying to get away from a suit look by changing little things but retaining the original design as much as possible, the hands as they were in the original would not stand. I must say myself, if there is one thing I'm not crazy about the original Alien, it's the hands. The design is fantastic, but the execution not so much. They always looked like rubber gloves to me. Giger didn’t like them either and called them “stiff, useless hands” in a magazine in 1992. At the same time, I wouldn't change a thing in the original Alien design. After all, Giger's art was augmenting human figures with all those dark and biomechanical features, so human-like hands and feet are definitely not out of place here. But, I don't think they would work for other movies (Photo below: B. Badejo as Alien in ‘79 photoshoot)
Stan Winston designed brand new hands for Alien Warriors based on a painting by Giger from 1978 called Alien Monster (sketch of which you can see in Winston Effect book). The two thumbs were suppose to remain but was then dropped (in the original it was done only to somehow break that glove look of the hands), but the idea of fused fingers remained. (Photos: auctioned off hands of the original and Warrior. Below: Giger’s painting and screenshot from Aliens)
VI. TAIL
And the last thing is the tail, which also had not been altered in any way. (Photos: Auctioned off tails from the original and Aliens. Below: ‘79 Promo shoot with B. Badejo and Warrior puppet photo from multiple Alien books such ad Making of Aliens and Alien Archives)
However, the placement of the tail did change. The original Alien had a very unusual placement of the tail - it didn't protrude from a tail bone, but from his anus. It was most likely done that way so that the tail would just hang freely as oppose to have a bend on the top that would keep breaking. They did have an awful lot of issues with the tail. Aliens places the tail in slightly more animalistic fashion, slightly higher. (Photos below, behind the scenes shot from the original movie and auctioned off Warrior suit)
Not only that, but the original Alien had bottocks which kind of looked like big metal diaper to house the tail attachment mechanism. That part of the design remained in the Warrior puppets, although the bottocks were more streamlined so they wouldn't have that diaper look (Photos: ‘79 promo shoot with B. Badejo and auctioned off Warrior stunt puppet)
Below, shots from promotional photoshoot of an Alien Warrior meant for merchandise. The photosession was actually shot by Skotak Brothers, the duo responsible for miniature effects in Aliens. The middle photo has been published in Alien Archives Book albeit flipped.
Again, comparing the Alien and Aliens designs is fun because they're so alike that the fun lays in finding actual differences. If you ask me, which design do I prefer I'd say this question is not valid - each design worked perfectly for each movie, and in this case I'm having a cake and I'm eating it too. I love Giger's work and designs, and I absolutely love what he designed under the dome, so I wouldn't want it covered up but at the same time I love the smooth dome look as it's creepy. So luckily, there are two versions which I can enjoy. That's why I could never decide on which I like better.
H.R.Giger had been very highly praiseful of the Queen, but what about the Aliens themselves?
""It's all beautifully done, everything, the designs and the way they're executed. As far as the designs are concerned, I have no criticism" - H.R. Giger about the design of Aliens in ALIENS. Cinefantastique Magazine May 1988
However, he didn't like the domeless head, even thought it was his design that was underneath - "But I didn’t like the ribbed cranium of the Alien warrior, although you couldn’t see the Aliens very much."
Unfortunately, 1986 was the last time Giger's original Alien was presented with few alterations, and starting with 1992's Alien 3 it would be redesigned from scratch and the only time that design would return (although made more organic looking) would have been in 2024. But, in here, Alien Trilogy, our safe zone for those who thought the saga ended perfectly with David Fincher's film, no other movie exist. Next one up, the design of the Alien Part II: Alien 3
Shout out to Alien Explorations and Monsterlegacy blogs. And be sure to check out the absolute best Alien fact source , the Strange Shapes blog HERE. Original comparison between Alien Drone and Warrior was published at JamesCameronOnline.com HERE
Read Part II HERE
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