XENOMORPH (2020)

Concept Art

Task:
Create two unique character designs and realise one of these as a sculpture. Create one prop design and at least one environment design and sum it all up in an art book.

Concept:
Earth was attacked and overrun by an alien race that enslaves its victims and creates genetically altered versions of them. A crew consisting of an alien and its human slaves was on its way to discover new planets to conquer, when they crash-landed on a seemingly deserted planet.

Time:
2 months

The Attack on Earth

Earth was invaded and mercilessly overrun by an aggressive alien race generally refered to as xenomorphs „alien bodies“. On Invasion Day a myriad of unidentified saucers poured onto the planet in an endless stream, releasing hundreds of thousands of xenomorphs. Being the inferior race, humans were conquered and quickly devoured by the alien invadors - both figuratively and literally.

The xenomorphs travel from planet to planet in order to find suitable life forms to feed upon. Their unique biology allows them to devour any living being as long as it is carbon-based. Once the alien race finds new species to attack, they extract DNA from their prey and begin an endless process of breeding new versions of themselves. Millions of xenomorphs die from ailed genetic mutations. But life is meaningless to this alien entity. They continue this process until a xenomorph sucessfully combines with the new DNA, creating an improved version of what has been before.

The Two Characters

Xenomorphs are highly flexible and resilient beings. Their very unique ability to adjust to an enormous range of climatic conditions, unparalleled to humans, was never before found in life on earth. This is due to a highly transformable skin. It absorbs most toxins, can create energy from sunlight, filter oxygen out of water and air and can turn as resilient as graphene. When entering uncharted environments, the xenomorph‘s skin becomes completely dry and releases psycho-biological spores that affect
all sentient beings, making them amenable.

Scout slaves are bred for one specific purpose. They exist only to detect threats, to seek shelter when needed or to find a way out of any kind of foreign terrain. They are as desposible as any other slave, meaning that even if they died performing their duties, they would simply be replcaed with a newly bred scout slave. Their spiderlike legs allow them to be agile, jumping enormously high and walking vast distances without even breaking a sweat. Their claws, a form of basic protection, are more commonly used for cutting their way through bushes and jungles.

The Alien Spaceship

The alien space ship is a biological vessel that operates on biological fuel. It is used for local travels and space travel between planets. Its unique skin is very similar to the skin of the xenomorphs. It can change into practically any imaginable state in order to adjust to current environmental conditions. Passengers board the ship through its cloaca at the bottom. They enter a goo that makes up the entire body. This special goo preserves every passenger while its chemical composition puts them in a deep sleep. Should the alien space ship run out of energy during its travels, it will begin consuming its own passengers one by one until they are all gone and it dies.

The Key Visual

The key visual depicts a scout slave in search for life on the planet its space ship crash landed on. It is leaning over a ridge overlooking a series of gorges. This vastness and solitude is interrupted by a beam of light, indicating a mysterious source that is yet to be discovered.

The Sculpture

The sculpture consists of super sculpey that was added to a wireframe of the creature, which in return was attached to two screws driven into a piece of wood. The wireframe was covered with a tape that allowed the super sculpey to better stick to it.

Layer after layer of super sculpey gave shape to limbs and features until finally the face was formed iteratively over several days with two metal orbs creating the eyes of the creature.