2001 Spacesuit

ALIENS NIGHT OUT

I always liked the ALIEN/ALIENS series of movies, and so when I had the opportunity to acquired a costume from ALIENS I jumped at it. The costume consisted of a stretch fabric body suit, with molded panels attached on the arms and legs as well as the lower waist. The rib cage is a separate piece that includes the shoulders as well as the spine and the "horns" on the rear. I refer to this as the "pig" cause the horns/tubes somewhat resemble pig legs. The rib cage zips up the front and is worn like a vest. The head section consists of an inner head piece (head harness) that is covered by the neck piece. The Alien head fits down over the top of the neck section. You see out through the mouth or off to each side just behind the rear of the jaw, so vision is rather limited. The hands and feet are separate, with the feet made of slip on tennis type shoes covered by the molded rubber feet. The body suit has an entry zipper up the rear with what may be a relief zipper in the front, off to one side. The tail is a separate piece that has an internal cord for attachment. The pictures below show the head, Spine back (pig) section, neck section, torso body suit, hands & feet, and the tail.

Upon inspection of the outfit, I realized some improvements could be made that would result in a better fit of the suit, as well as providing a better way to secure the parts so that they moved with the wearer and did not flop around. The body suit was larger than me in width, so I tailored it a bit, and improved on the attachment and location of the molded rubber appliances. Next, I made a harness to make a secure attachment of the rib cage, as well as providing a method for attachment of the tail. The "pig" is rather heavy, so as it wants to fall down in back, it tends to pull the rib cage up in the front, under the wearer's neck. So the harness eliminates this problem by providing a secure attachment. The harness includes a vest which tightly attaches the rib cage to the wearers upper torso. It also provides a secure attachment for the tail via straps which run up and over the shoulders. It was not clear how the tail was supposed to be attached, so I made a latex casting piece which blends the tail into the spine and provides a better look for the rear of the costume. It also provides a secure attachment for the tail with the rest of the suit. Here are some pictures of the modification process.

These pictures show the clay lay-up of the piece I made to blend the tail into the spine. This was my first attempt at this type of work, so I spent countless hours making sure everything fit, and making sure the style of the tail flowed into the spine section. A mold was made , then latex rubber was slip cast into the mold, followed by injection of foam rubber to fill the volume behind the bony section. I was learning the processes as I was working on this. I spent many hours on this as I wanted to make sure I did it right the first time, since I really didn't want to have to redo any of the molding process. The resulting molded piece was airbrushed and attached to the body suit. The tail is attached using Velcro and the central cord that runs through the tail is attached to the body harness via the straps shown in the picture above. This holds up the weight of the tail.