VFX breakdown: Creating the creatures in Alien: Earth

Blood-engorged ticks, deadly orchids and the infamous xenomorph: VFX supervisor Aladino Debert gives us the lowdown on how Zoic Studios helped shape the creatures and visual effects of Noah Hawley’s Alien: Earth.

Set in the year 2120, two years before the events of Alien (1979), Alien: Earth depicts an Earth governed by five corporations: Prodigy, Weyland-Yutani, Lynch, Dynamic and Threshold. Cyborgs and synthetics co-exist with humans and we are soon introduced to the first hybrid prototype, Wendy. After a research vessel crash-lands, Wendy and the other hybrids make a shocking discovery.

Created by Noah Hawley, Alien: Earth marks the first TV series in the Alien franchise, with Ridley Scott serving as executive producer. The show has been nominated for several Emmy awards, including Outstanding Special Visual Effects in a Season or a Movie.

Working across all eight episodes of the acclaimed sci-fi series, Zoic delivered more than 250 visual effects shots over the course of a 14-month production.

Hawley and editor Regis Kimble have a longstanding relationship with Zoic through their work on acclaimed shows Fargo and Legion. When Aladino Debert joined Zoic in January 2024, Alien: Earth was still in the early prep stages. “It seemed to be the right fit for me,” he begins. “I already knew the VFX supervisor, Jeffrey A. Okun. I was very happy to be part of it.”

The show is a new story featuring new characters and creatures. “The timeline is a few years before the events of the first film, so there were lots of elements that played into our advantage,” Debert says. “There’s a design and ethos that we wanted to adhere to, but besides the xenomorph, all the creatures were new.”

Creating the creatures in Alien: Earth

Zoic was responsible for two of the main creatures depicted in the show: the ticks (officially known as Species 19) and the orchids (aka D. Plumbicare).

Debert admits that the ticks in particular were challenging to create. For the show, Zoic developed four distinct stages of the creature’s life cycle, from tiny, tadpole-like larvae and burrowing juveniles to full-grown adults and engorged forms swollen with their victims’ fluids. The team drew inspiration from various sources, including real-world blood-feeding organisms.

“When the ticks feed on people, they engorge to the size of a basketball,” Debert adds. “We had to develop four different creatures, [each] with their own modelling, texturing, rigging and animation behaviour, because they all move in a different way. When they are full-sized is when we really get to see them, and they are very creepy. When they were fully engorged, we wanted to maintain the physicality. For example, when they are full of blood, they slosh around and can’t really move in the same way that they would normally, so that presented lots of challenges.”

Debert acknowledges that Zoic had lots of creative freedom and input when it came to creating the ticks, as well as having sufficient time for exploration of the creature’s design. He worked closely alongside a designer and went through quite a lengthy concept-design process. “We worked on it for around three months,” he says. “It was a great way to get introduced to the show.”

Director Dana Gonzales, who also served as DOP on the first episode, worked on some concept designs for the orchids along with Hawley. The orchids presented a different challenge for Zoic. The process involved taking concept frames and making an animatable creature, which meant coming up with how it behaves, moves and the muscle system, so it didn’t feel one-dimensional.

Found aboard the Weyland-Yutani spaceship USCSS Maginot, the orchids are a deadly, bulbous, plant-like alien form, with a tentacle arm and feelers, that hang from ceilings. Zoic was tasked with developing their movements and predatory instincts.

In the final episode, the orchids get their moment in the spotlight. At first depicted as immobile, they are now able to move. In one scene, an orchid attacks a soldier before proceeding to eat her. “It’s rather gruesome. A rig was constructed on set to be able to lift her up with a prop orchid; however, it didn’t look like the one we’d done already. We ended up having to paint her out and replace her with a digital double so our orchid could achieve its full effect of eating her. Noah wanted to see the muscles bulge and a chewing effect.”

One of Debert’s previous projects served as an influence when it came to designing the orchid’s muscle system. “A few years ago, I worked on Carnival Row and in one of the episodes we had this creature called Sparas, which is a sort of mutated human that opens its chest and chews people up. They have teeth in their chests, and can devour people.”

As well as working on those creatures, Zoic also created set extensions. Debert argues that the first episode was the hardest, as it involved introducing the creatures and environments, as well as setting the tone for the rest of the show. One of the cities we are first introduced to is Prodigy City, a major, futuristic metropolis in Asia governed by the Prodigy Corporation.

Also challenging were the scenes where Wendy controls technology, during which her character is able to manipulate cameras and monitors. Zoic wanted to emulate the original film, and the show’s design is also based on seventies retrofuturism.

Debert explains that the design choices all had that aesthetic in mind. “The show looks very similar to the film,” he says. ”For example, most of the monitors are CRT monitors, because they didn’t have flat screens. They wanted a visual interpretation of how Wendy can manipulate the images, so we landed on the effect that a strong magnet has on a CRT monitor.”

To research the effect, the VFX team found videos of big magnets next to old televisions. “It distorts the electron beam and creates all these weirdly cool colour bands. Noah loved that idea, but once we nailed the design, we had to find a way to make it work and be art-directable,” Debert says.

Developing acid-melting-metal effects

A self-proclaimed fan of the original film, Debert was ecstatic that he got to work on a sequence with a xenomorph – the terrifying extraterrestrial antagonist that first appears in Alien, as well as featuring throughout the franchise. He points to the bookshelf behind him and proudly shows off his xenomorph replica sitting on it.

“The sequence we worked on is when Wendy and her brother are fighting a xenomorph in a hangar space with containers,” he adds. “She’s fighting the xenomorph with a katana sword and the xenomorph is attacking them from outside the container. When she stabs it, it starts to bleed and then starts to melt everything. So, we had to develop acid-melting-metal effects for the whole sequence.”

He recalls watching Alien for the first time when he was very young and it scaring the “bejesus” out of him. “What I loved about it was that it was so gritty,” he says. “There were [other] great sci-fi movies around the time, like Star Wars, but Alien was a whole other ball game for me visually. Along with Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Blade Runner, it’s probably the reason why I’m in the industry. So, the opportunity to even be remotely associated with an Alien project, I couldn’t be happier.”

Debert also relished the opportunity to work with Hawley and Kimble. “Art director Jason Knox-Johnston and production designer Andy Nicholson created a style guide, along with Noah. It was a great base for us and it was super detailed; they really did their homework. I also want to make sure to give enough kudos to the Zoic team, without whom none of this would be possible.”

 

This article appears in the October/November issue of Definition

WORDS: OLIVER WEBB. IMAGES: FX.