Kaiju Country: Alien Queen

Aliens! Predators! Versus!

One hot mamma!

Intro

I've had a bunch of Aliens Vs Predator miniatures in my backlog for years and decided that it was time I painted some of them up!

The majority of the miniatures I have were produced by Prodos Games before they lost the license to produce the AVP: The Hunt Begins game. I managed to pick up almost all of the Alien and Predator miniatures along with a few of the Colonial Marines although I very much regret not stumping up for the Drop ship and APC when I had the chance!

As well as the Prodos miniatures, I also picked up a few bits from the Gale Force 9 Aliens board game as they have some nice miniatures in their range as well! And the point of this rambling is...? The fact that I now had two Alien Queens - one from GF9 in hard plastic and a resin queen from Prodos.

Although the GF9 one is a nice enough miniature, the Prodos Queen easily takes the crown for the most exquisite miniature Queen sculpt and has the benefit of being resin rather than hard plastic. Resin allows for better surface detail and overall form for a miniature of this size and being resin, it was also far easier to customise.

Although I had a few options for converting my second Alien Queen, it was only ever going to go one way... That's right, I decided to sculpt my resin Queen a huge egg sac!

Research!

As this mini project was going to be based on an existing character, I started by looking through production photos of the original Aliens movie and AVP. I have both of the Alien Vs Predator Studio ADI books which were really useful reference for the AVP Queen, but there weren't too many pictures of the original Alien Queen in her birthing chamber. The ones I did find were a little hazy with details like how she's suspended being pretty difficult to make out.

I opted to go for a combination of the original Queen and the more compact kidney bean shaped birthing sac from AVP. The reason for this was that in AVP she's suspended by chains; sort of plumbed into the maze facility bult by the Yautja Aliens. As I wanted this queen to be an unchained version, I needed to work out how to suspend this design.

The Studio ADI Queen sac is much more compact than its predecessor

I referred back to the original Aliens film for the solution; you can see in the images below that the Queen has a number of very thick secondary spines which look like cow thigh bones jutting out from her back. A combination of these and bands of slime / biological resin are suspending her from the gantries and pipes.

The bony spines are very visible in this photo, but I couldn't find any rear shots to show how they connected to the queen

The original sac was very long and was suspended in multiple places by slimy resin

I decided early on that the Queen should be connected to the bony protrusions via a sort of bony socket a bit like a pelvis. This would take the weight of both the Queen and the sac without compromising her anatomy should she ever wish to abandon her hive as she does in the movies.

Sculpting the sac

I began by cleaning up the Alien Queen miniature, heating the components and gradually shaping them into a resting pose and straightening the tail. This was key as it would inform the shape of the egg sac itself. I shaped tinfoil and wire to achieve the rough shape I wanted then covered it with a layer of Super Sculpey and baked it to give me a nice hard basic shape to work with.

The initial shape after firing

The next step was to embed the tail into the length of the sac, taking into account the fact that it couldn't be fully attached while the sculpt still needed firing! I built up the sac and pressed the tail into it, slowly building up the areas around the tail without obscuring it.

I constantly referred to the AVP sac design to make sure that I didn't stray too far from the source material - I purposely bulked the sac out so that I could sculpt some nice skin folds and creases, but was sure to keep it in scale with the Queen miniature. I repeatedly tested the fit with the Queen to make sure that her legs settled nicely against the sac. I intended to make it look as though the sac was bulging around the legs so carefully worked the Sculpey creases around the legs.

I beefed up the form before adding in sharper folds

As the sac increased in size, I started to create bulges like the stitched sections of a blimp

Even though it wouldn't be that visible, I still fully detailed the underside!

One of many test fittings for the Queen's leg placement

At this point, I built enough Sculpey around the legs to hold the Queen in place while I examined the overall shape from all angles

This is where the fun started as I began to add texture and some really sharp folds!

The pores were individually added with a needle then washed with Isopropyl to smooth them down.

I used animal skin (mainly elephants) as reference for the skin texture

The ovipositor for the sac was sculpted to the width of an Alien egg with sphincter-like tension near the end

Note that the pores and creases are stretched on some of the higher surfaces - this gave variance to the surface and made the skin of the sac look as though it was actually being stretched where it bulged

Once I was happy with the sculpt, I baked it then glued the queen in place

I used greenstuff to tidy up the join with the tail

While sculpting the sac, I took extra care to feed the fleshy creases down from the tail spines

Overall, I think the sac looked pretty natural in the way that it meshed with the Queen's body

The pinched skin in the middle of the sac was probably my favourite thing of the sculpt as it gave the impression of weight and skin being stretched over the flesh

Making an industrial complex a home!

In the original Aliens movie, the Queen was ensconced deep within the bowels of a mining facility and I wanted to make an aesthetically similar setting for my Queen.

The iconic image of a Queen nestled in amongst the walkways and pipes - it's such a classic mechanical, biological contrast and I love it!

I started with a large plastic base for the diorama. I sectioned off the flooring with aluminium mesh and styrene as well as a stepped section at the front of the base to imply that she's found an underground hideaway to produce her offspring...

I built up gantries, posts and piping next to and above the Queen to make it feel claustrophobic while trying not to obscure her too much

The gantry and pipes were necessary to frame the diorama but also provide a realistic structure from which to suspend the Queen

Once I had the basic structure in place I added rivets and fleshy alien growths around the birthing chamber

The fleshy 'creep' was really fun to sculpt - I rolled out tentacle shapes, then built the flesh ribs around them

I sculpted a number of eggs which I placed around the base

I made sure to keep the main area under the Queen fairly clear so as not to cause issues later on. You can just about see the inch long pin I set into the rear of the base to help mount the Queen later

I added some little control boxes and electric cabling around the structure for a bit of added realism

Once I was happy with the diorama base I filled all of the edges with epoxy putty and sanded it smooth. I also did this for the cut-outs on pipes and gantry sections

The Bone connector

The final piece of the puzzle was the bony spines I mentioned earlier on as these were needed to suspend the Queen convincingly from the pipework. As mentioned previously in this post, it wasn't easy to see from the production photos how the bony spines attached to the Queen so I came up with my own pelvis-like connector and sculpted four tapering bony shafts with a knuckle on one end and a fan-like shape on the other, working on the principle that big flat surface area with some holes would help give the slimy resin something to adhere to.

The secondary pelvis was located just behind the Queen's original pelvis

As soon as the bone spines were in place, the Queen looked more 'suspended''

This started to give the classic profile I wanted

There is something very unsettling about the large bone spines as they put you in mind of spider limbs

Test fitting the Queen into her new home!

Finally I sculpted an egg being pushed out of the ovipositor sphincter - the pin from the base would run right up through this egg to give more stability

Painting

In homage to the Aliens movie and arcade game that I loved as a kid, I decided to go with an acid yellow colour for the Queen's egg sac.

Most of the Aliens arcade game was completely divorced from the movie, but the Alien Queen boss was fantastic!

I kept the colours of the queen pretty close to the original, with glazes over silvers to give that lovely insectile carapace look. Multiple layers of varnish also helped to give the Queen that unsettling moist look from the movies.

The gantries, pipes and flooring were kept fairly plain so as not to detract from the Queen. I used hazard stripes on some of the areas such as the step edging just to break up the large metallic surfaces.

The finished Queen!

Once everything was painted, I glued the queen into place and used clear UV resin to create the drool on her mouth and the slimy resin strands connecting her to the pipework. I used some clear paints to tint the resin after fixing her in place and with that she was done!