Culture

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

The new book Alien: The Archive, out today, is the first complete collection of concept art and photography from the franchise.
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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.

The Archive

The alien xenomorph may have first appeared onscreen bursting through poor John Hurt's chest, but it originally spawned from the mind of surrealist H. R. Giger, whose work on a failed Dune adaptation (sorry, Jodorowsky) caught the eye of writer Dan O'Bannon. Though Giger's preproduction work on Alien has occasionally surfaced online, fans won't have to hunt through the darkened corridors of the Internet any longer: The new book The Archive, out today, is the first complete collection of concept art and photography from the franchise. Just don't put your face too close to the pages.