At DoG we have been fortunate enough to chat with several of the people involved in the visual effects, designs and miniatures of Alien (1979). As part of the article ‘Top 75 Spaceships in movies and TV’ (see link at bottom), we spoke to SF illustrator Chris Foss about his time in the art department of Alien under Ridley Scott and Dan O’Bannon. There seemed to be a bit of a missing link between the endless output of Foss and the other artists to produce the resultant design of the Nostromo. Who was the ‘angry man’ who in frustration took all the production designs away and cobbled something together? Who actually designed the craft?

Ron Cobb, the conceptual designer behind Dark Star, Total Recall, Aliens, Conan The Barbarian, The Last Starfighter and innumerable other SF and fantasy classics. has been kind enough to shed some light on the mystery. Since Ron is, along with Syd Mead, the premier futurist of sci-fi movies of the last three decades, we’re more than honoured. Over to him…

In the late seventies Dan O’Bannon and Ron Shusett asked me to create a series of small illustrations to help them pitch and sell their latest script. Once they acquired a producer (Gordon Carroll of Brandywine productions) O’Bannon hatched his plot to convince Carroll, and all who would listen, to immediately hire what Dan considered to be his dream team for conceptual art and design, Chris Foss, me, and later, Moebius (Jean Giraud) and H R Giger. As a result I soon found myself hidden away at Fox Studios in an old rehearsal hall above an even older sound stage with Chris Foss and O’Bannon, trying to visualize Alien. For up to five months Chris and I (with Dan supervising) turned out a large amount of artwork, while the producers, Gordon Carroll, Walter Hill and David Giler, looked for a director.