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Ah now we finally reach the room that was promised back on page 16: the heart of the nest, and with it, the queen.

Storytime! So xenomorphs have actually changed quite a bit in appearance over the various movies. Obviously their design in the newer movies is a lot smoother and more organic looking (we don’t talk about the newer movies,) but the trend actually stretches back all the way to the original sequel. In Aliens their aesthetic was a lot of spikes and boney ribbing, their elongated head resembled a bloated spine, their arms and their tales were barbed; texture-wise, they looked exoskeletal, like huge bugs.
But in the original movie, going right back to the source, they were drawn up by that Giger fellow (read: an surrealist artist with a VERY unique vision who was probably inspired by nightmares about earthworms or something idk he was an odd guy), and their aesthetic back then was something else. They were like a mass of pipes and tubes then, half-transparent and layered in twisted, ingrown wires, metallic and plastic, like the confusion and mysterious hostility of an old ship’s grimy undercarriage, overgrown and animated by years of pressure and neglect, with a humanoid skull at the center. That was the design that started the legend, and the one that everything since has been copying and adapting, for better or worse. Though I made a few of my own changes in this comic, I used the original movie as my chief aesthetic reference (as much as I’m able, the original design is haaaard!)
BUT! There was no queen in the original movie. There has never been a queen with the original aesthetic. And I’ve always considered her huge head crest too bony and rigid to match that aesthetic.

SO, TL;DR: this queen is in large part my own design! I kept the four arms, separated mouthparts, and basic body plan from her first movie, but the details are much different. She’s got the same head dome that the males have, but the side pipes have widened and stretched out a web, and the ribs have grown together into a sort of breastplate that (quite intentionally) resembles Samus’s. Her neck is modestly shorter and I gave her lips, to allow her to emote and show some more expression, like the males do.

Idk how it compares, but I like it. In a few later drawings she looks very regal.

Description
<== First | <= Prev | Next =>

Ah now we finally reach the room that was promised back on page 16: the heart of the nest, and with it, the queen.

Storytime! So xenomorphs have actually changed quite a bit in appearance over the various movies. Obviously their design in the newer movies is a lot smoother and more organic looking (we don’t talk about the newer movies,) but the trend actually stretches back all the way to the original sequel. In Aliens their aesthetic was a lot of spikes and boney ribbing, their elongated head resembled a bloated spine, their arms and their tales were barbed; texture-wise, they looked exoskeletal, like huge bugs.
But in the original movie, going right back to the source, they were drawn up by that Giger fellow (read: an surrealist artist with a VERY unique vision who was probably inspired by nightmares about earthworms or something idk he was an odd guy), and their aesthetic back then was something else. They were like a mass of pipes and tubes then, half-transparent and layered in twisted, ingrown wires, metallic and plastic, like the confusion and mysterious hostility of an old ship’s grimy undercarriage, overgrown and animated by years of pressure and neglect, with a humanoid skull at the center. That was the design that started the legend, and the one that everything since has been copying and adapting, for better or worse. Though I made a few of my own changes in this comic, I used the original movie as my chief aesthetic reference (as much as I’m able, the original design is haaaard!)
BUT! There was no queen in the original movie. There has never been a queen with the original aesthetic. And I’ve always considered her huge head crest too bony and rigid to match that aesthetic.

SO, TL;DR: this queen is in large part my own design! I kept the four arms, separated mouthparts, and basic body plan from her first movie, but the details are much different. She’s got the same head dome that the males have, but the side pipes have widened and stretched out a web, and the ribs have grown together into a sort of breastplate that (quite intentionally) resembles Samus’s. Her neck is modestly shorter and I gave her lips, to allow her to emote and show some more expression, like the males do.

Idk how it compares, but I like it. In a few later drawings she looks very regal.