According to the WSJ H.R. Giger died yesterday.
I thought it might be worth noting just how much influence his original artwork from the first Alien film has had on succeeding films in the Science fiction Genre. Link below to that article.
I think the story goes that Giger received a pretty good payday for his very influential artwork that was used in the first Alien film. But after that his grotesque designs were mimicked by legions of Hollywood set designers and creature designers.....and with no compensation back to the originator.
In the recent alien film, Prometheus, not only the "alien monster" is a Giger creation, but the "engineers ship" is straight out of a giger book of art/sketches. ( H.R. Giger's Retrospective 1964-1984) The ship concept sketches in the book are titled "work No. 396 and work 375. It is that ship exactly that appears in Prometheus. Originally drawn in 1978.
I can't say that I'm a huge fan of Giger's art. I find them repulsive (repellant),sexually explicit in the style of a deranged man's nightmare. Grotesque in the extreme and sometimes eerily elegant. Mind warping. ...strangely compelling....Egad, I must be sick. Look away, look away.
Seen below is his sketch of a ship's pilot. Seen both in the original Alien movie and again in Prometheus.
Had Dante lived in recent times, he might have used Giger to illustrate his "Inferno". One imagines it, anyway.
-Steve
