Alien - Out of the Shadows
It’s not the first time we’ve been asked by amazing Audible UK team to work on an original audio drama. For us it’s always been fun and we relish the challenge to come up with something new and creative. This time it was no different but the stakes were higher due to the franchise's huge stature spanning over 4 decades. H.R.Giger, Ridley Scott, James Cameron to name a few are the legends associated with the Alien franchise. Through following years the series has led to numerous books, comics and video game spin-offs. Audible Studios and director Dirk Maggs under the supervision of the movie studio 20th Century Fox have turned Out of the Shadows - Tim Lebbon’s book into a brilliant audio drama.
The story takes place at a point between the action of Alien and Aliens. The series’ heroine, Lt. Ellen Ripley has been rescued from deep space by the crew of mining vessel Marion. The story chronicles her involvement in a Xenomorph outbreak on the planet LV-178 and th e mining vessel in orbit above it. The survivors' attempts to escape the creatures are further complicated by Ash, whose AI consciousness has survived inside the shuttle that brought Ripley to them. Mr. Reszelski and Mr. Jackson were once again brought on board to Design & Direct the whole package.
IN SPACE, NO ONE CAN HEAR YOUR SCREAM
.The concept
At the very beginning we had a strong desire to depict the whole interior of a spacecraft in order to recreate the chest-bursting act. Quickly we realised that reinventing this iconic scene is a mistake.
Working along with Audible team the concept evolved into a simple psychological and emotional stimulus. We aimed to shock potential viewers, operating in a claustrophobic and rather abstract surrounding. We wanted to create content that would make people want to share the experience with their friends and colleagues.
.Design approach
Inspirations: Abviously we drew our direct inspirations from Alien film series in particular Prometheus. We are under huge impression how Ben Procter put together concept design boards. Especially spaceship interiors are our favorites. In terms of camera movement as well as depicting the found footage look and feel we definitely got inspired by ultimate classics: The Blair Witch Project, Paranormal Activity and V/H/S.
Our In-House Designer and co-Director James Jackson was responsible for cover concepts as well as design and execution.
His creative brief towards the cover creation called Under The Surface was based around the fact that the aliens are parasitic and grow in a human host, then burst out of them , sing a simple yet effective approach that embraces the iconic shape and form of the alien without directly showing the creature. The effect must be striking, unsettling and eye catching. In our research we focused on a surface tension represented by a human skin. Enormous pressure created under the influence of an object been pushed towards a thin elastic and organic surface. We wanted to build up tension not only in a literal sense meaning. A baby xenomorph is not bursting out through the skin. There is no gore.
.3D Assets creation
Our creative team quickly tapped one of his in house designers - Andy Stiensky who was best suited for the task due to his insanely diverse 3D Max skills combined with the ability to use physical simulations inside 3d environment. On top of that he possessed great skills to produce photorealistic and humanly - organic results.
THE COVER
Cloth simulations were made inside 3D Max with extremely subdivided mesh.
All post production was done in Photoshop. 3D passes were mixed together as layers. It gave us an ability to speed up the workflow and directly cooperate with Graphic Designer.
ANIMATION
Typically with such a serious and original production we encountered few technical difficulties as such:
Muscles and respiration(abdominal contractions):
At the very beginning stomach muscles rig had been created underneath skin surface. However, in order to achieve more artistic and animated results this concept had been dropped. Instead we created series of morphs in Z-Brush as well as a simplified muscles rig - utilising the same software environment.
Making the character looks like she’s down with fever
A number of additional beauty passes had been created with the purpose of making the scene more convincing. One of them was an animated dripping sweat texture which created an extra layer of skin glossiness. On top of that, bandage covering “the patient's” intimate parts had been modeled and cloth simulated.
The final push:
In our opinion it was the most challenging problem we stumble across. We strived to achieve a see through effect off the skin during it’s extreme stretching by applying series of 3d layers with separate textures. 3D layers appeared gradually one after another.The aim was to depict the skin’s increasing transparency especially when it stretches in the most extreme way in the same time revealing blood vessels.
The aim was to depict the skin’s increasing transparency especially when it stretches in the most extreme way in the same time revealing blood vessels.
.Sound design
Thanks to courtesy of the movie studio 20th Century Fox we could utilise an array of sound effects and musical score to Alien: Isolation - an action/adventure video game. Working with our phenomenal sound designer Sefi Carmel we were able to display the production quality in rather superior way.