Chris Foss is a well-known sci-fi illustrator who started to work in the early 1960-s, and I think it is exactly the case when his works speak for himself.
Foss also worked on Jodorowsky’s ”Dune” and Ridley Scott’s ”Alien”…
‘Spice Container’, design for Jodorowsky’s ”Dune”, 1975.
Another design for Jodorowski’s ”Dune”, 1975.
‘Refinery on Asteroids’, one of the unused ”Alien” scetches.
‘Pyramid Birth Temple Interior’, one of the unused ”Alien” scetches. Seems like H. R. Giger was a more suitable choice for this dark universe, isn’t it?
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Den of Geek did a very lenghty interview with Chris Foss, it’s a fascinating reading. The man has seen it all…
– The ‘chest-burster’ was based on an episode of food-poisoning, though I’m sure Dan’s told you the story. (Foss)
– No…? That’s not mentioned in the Alien quadrilogy documentaries either. (Den of Geek)
– Oh, well I’ll tell you: long before he came to Paris [for Jodorowsky’s Dune], [O’Bannon] ate some fast food and woke up in the night in incredible pain and actually had to be taken to hospital; and imagined that there was a ‘beast’ inside him. And that was exactly where that thing came from.
– So far the credit has gone to Ron Shusett, at least as far as the quadrilogy documentaries are concerned.
– Absolutely not. (Foss)
Interesting. As time goes by, I see that O’Bannon starts to get more and more credit for working on that film. By the way, I wrote before about ”Dark Star”, where O’Bannon did one of the main roles and co-wrote with John Carpenter (it’s a very atypical Carpenter movie, by the way). Working on that script actually was an initial inspiration for the ”Alien” script.
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Coming back to Chris Foss… the picture below has an unusual history. This is the original by Foss:
And this is the modified version by artist Glenn Brown:
Looks like a copy-paste with increased brightness and contrast, isn’t it? The second work was sold by Glenn Brown for the first time on the auction in 202, and then sold again on auction for about $5.7 million. Read more about this weird story here.
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Here’s one thing that suprised me – Foss has never really been a science fiction fan and he usually didn’t read the books he illustrated, painting the scenes directly from his creative mind.
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Amazing, isn’t it? Here‘s a very detailed article about the man.
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