Scans taken “The Colonial Marines Technical Manual” written and illustrated by Lee Brimmicombe-Wood and published by Boxtree in 1995… I’ll have to admit this rare book is one of my prize possessions!
“The Colonial Marines Technical Manual” if you hadn’t of guessed is basically an analytical expansion on all the military hardware envisaged and designed for the movie Aliens. This book covers in an insane level of detail everything this future American fighting force has at it’s disposal, from the things you’ll recognise: Pulse Rifles, Drop Ships & Smart Guns etc through to things you won’t: Ghille Suits, Rocket Launchers, Tanks and much more…
If you’ve ever watched Aliens and wondered just how many floating point operations a Synth - sorry - Artificial Person is capable of processing per second then this is simply an absolute must read!
A rare glimpse of some of James Cameron’s original concept artwork for his 1986 masterpiece “Aliens”. This topographical painting his re-imagining of the films nightmare planet, the inhospitable, unearthly bleakness that is LV-426 Acheron, a dimly lit world ravaged by screaming wind and lashed with perpetual storms….. not unlike a few places in the UK I can think of!
Image taken from a larger selection of Alien/Aliens goodies over at the always excellent ski-ffy.blogspot.com original post at http://ski-ffy.blogspot.com/2009/05/alien-aliens-laser-disc-goodies.html
Two more samples from Wayne Barlowe’s fantastic Expidition Book (Published 1990). The “Daggerwirst” is an alien predator indigenous to Darwin IV, a fictional (or yet to be discovered!) planet in orbit around a binary star system very close to our own, all evolutionary design of course is hypothectical! These creature’s, of roughly man sized proportions communicate via sonar pings and swoop on their prey from the trunks and branches of huge extraterrestrial trees…
I posted a previous featuere on the the expidition book back in July last year, as I mentioned then it’s basically a grown up version of Ricky Gervais’s Flanimals books, though of course predates them - in fact I wonder if Ricky referenced Wayne’s work? Anyway read a little bit more about the Daggerwrist and Darwin IV’s other exotic species via Wayne’s official gallery feature: http://www.waynebarlowe.com/expedition_pages/index_expedition.htm the book is also available to buy starting at $20 via Amazon.
I thought I’d add a quick post as an addendum to previous 2001 Space Odyssey post’s I featured late last year - http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/2008/12/10/2001-a-space-odyssey-1/ & http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/2008/12/11/2001-a-space-odyssey-2/
basically here’s a collection of further reading / Cool stuff.
First up some links regarding the late Harry Lange a former NASA Illustrator whom Kubrick employed due to his extensive astronautical design experience. Harry helped to produce authentic prop and set designs, a sample of his concept art is above.
Read about Harry here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Lange_(film_designer) and via his official site here: http://www.harry-lange.org.uk/index.html which has a page dedicated to all the major book’s on Kubrick’s masterpiece http://www.harry-lange.org.uk/products/products.html
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Also of major interest and extremely cool: Joe Mackenzie’s nicely designed tribute site http://www.halproject.com/ which includes the chance to download your very own Hal-9000 screen saver! basically whilst running it will show random samplings of the HAL 9000 monitor animations, very authentic and strangely calming… it’s available for Mac or PC and it’s completely Free!
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And finally… I came across these well rendered 2001 Desktop Icon’s at zyotism.com… So you can now have one of the Discovery’s Pod’s as your Hard Drive Icon! http://www.zyotism.com/aesthetics/iconsets/2001/index.html
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Update: April 2009 - More Resources / Interest at http://www.simonatkinsoncreativearts.com/ - Thanks for the tip Simon!
Before I start I’d like to point out all material is sourced via this amazing Aliens tribute site: http://aliensarchive.tripod.com/home.html. Though it doesn’t appear to have been updated for a some time it’s still extremely extensive, with script revisions, FX info and costume design and detailing - a must read!
So with regards to this post… here we have a small selection of storyboard frames from everybody’s favourite “Vietnam in Space” movie: Aliens - (Directed James Cameron, 1986). Theses samples are taken from across several drafts I believe and were illustrated by artists Roger Dear, Maciek Piotrowski and Denis Rich, apparently these scan’s are taken from the films Laser Disc Release, although full versions (copies?) of the storyboard do crop occasionally on ebay. The first thing you notice is just how close to the final film print they actually are, you can almost hear them! I’ve tried to arrange them in chronological order from top left and across - I’m not sure the final “fueling” thumbnail (bottom row) made it into the film.
As for the film itself, well I think there’s a fair chance that if your reading this you’ve probably seen it more than once. Better than Ridley Scott’s original? well it’s hardly worth arguing over as both will forever be tagged as visionary film making. As for the sequels? Alien 3 nullifies the events of it’s predecessor and ultimately pails into insignificance, though Fincher’s effort does have it’s merits including some great sets and very nifty camera work. Ressurection as with 3 is best enjoyed when you remove all thought’s of the first two movies, it’s watchable nonsense which is more than can be said for you know what….
Here’s a funny clip giving you a insight into James Cameron’s thoughts on that which is unmentionable: http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=aKnS7CGWNmU
Ridley Scott’s Storyboard for Alien is here: http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/2008/08/26/alien-storyboards/
Following on from the prior post here’s more from Jodorowsky’s gloriously doomed Dune, this time featuring the efforts of Devon’s finest - Chris Foss… nice to feature some of Foss’s work pre-airbrush-gloss!
As before all artwork featured via the excellent http://www.duneinfo.com/
I will endavour to find something original soon!
