I spent the past week mostly doing world building, and I'll probably spend next week doing the same. The ship is absolutely massive and I need a lot more things to fill it.
Sure is difficult working with realistic aliens. A few years ago I went on a binge watching lots of classic alien movies and so few even try to do something cool. Most just go completely random/weird or stylize regular human stuff.
My favorite concepts come from Alien:
H. R. Giger had an incredible iconic style and the environments have just enough self consistency and logic to really feel believable during the movie.
Doesn't work as well when your brain has time to look for details. Outside of the tense pacing of the movie it's more obvious it's just a set with random greebling.
The alien itself is even cooler. Just a person in a suit yet that head makes it near perfect. No obvious eyes yet a very obvious mouth. Makes it unsettling since humans are so good at finding faces.
No science went in to its design yet it's still one of the most realistic aliens out there. Not too humanoid, yet not too random. Birth cycle makes no sense but it's very alien which is cool.
Arrival's designs are ok:
It's just a boring empty room, but I do like the texture. Kinda stealing that for Hapax
(actually I was more inspired by The Last Guardian's environments)
Not the biggest fans of the aliens either. I'll praise them since so many other movie aliens are actively bad, but I dislike how monotonous their designs are. Concept art is a bit more interesting so maybe it's just the fog hiding all the details.
The fog is a cool touch. Most movies just handwave alien atmosphere needs.
Lastly I'll mention Avatar:
It's just blue cat humans in a tree. Really uninteresting outside of a few language/culture things, but I couldn't talk about movie aliens and not mention them.
TLDR: knowledge of alien movies isn't that helpful when designing alien ships.
Sure is difficult working with realistic aliens. A few years ago I went on a binge watching lots of classic alien movies and so few even try to do something cool. Most just go completely random/weird or stylize regular human stuff.
My favorite concepts come from Alien:
H. R. Giger had an incredible iconic style and the environments have just enough self consistency and logic to really feel believable during the movie.
Doesn't work as well when your brain has time to look for details. Outside of the tense pacing of the movie it's more obvious it's just a set with random greebling.
The alien itself is even cooler. Just a person in a suit yet that head makes it near perfect. No obvious eyes yet a very obvious mouth. Makes it unsettling since humans are so good at finding faces.
No science went in to its design yet it's still one of the most realistic aliens out there. Not too humanoid, yet not too random. Birth cycle makes no sense but it's very alien which is cool.
Arrival's designs are ok:
It's just a boring empty room, but I do like the texture. Kinda stealing that for Hapax
(actually I was more inspired by The Last Guardian's environments)
Not the biggest fans of the aliens either. I'll praise them since so many other movie aliens are actively bad, but I dislike how monotonous their designs are. Concept art is a bit more interesting so maybe it's just the fog hiding all the details.
The fog is a cool touch. Most movies just handwave alien atmosphere needs.
Lastly I'll mention Avatar:
It's just blue cat humans in a tree. Really uninteresting outside of a few language/culture things, but I couldn't talk about movie aliens and not mention them.
TLDR: knowledge of alien movies isn't that helpful when designing alien ships.
