Alien Concept Art for Feature Film

Brandon Tenney

I'm a screenwriter.

All right, artists. I need your skills. You're my only hope.

I'd love a couple stunning pieces of concept art of an alien creature featured in a screenplay of mine. The goal is not only to help a reader visualize the aliens as clearly as possible, but to also use the concept art as a proof of concept of tone, design, and believability.

If all of the above could be captured in one piece, that would be preferable. Even if that piece is mostly a larger image capturing the scene (included below) with an inset close-up or something.

So, what's the alien? What's the tone? Get to it already, okay okay.

The story takes place in Alaska. It's late winter. Snow dusts the branches of trees and pocks the forest floor, but spring is nipping at winter's heels. We're in a forest. It's barren. The trees stand far apart like they're avoiding one another. It's afternoon. Long shadows stab the ground. It's eerie. Otherworldly, despite it still being on Earth.

This hair-raising oddness is something I want to capture in the art.

Now, the alien. There's seven of them. Below is the scene leading up to the first sighting of the alien, the scene of the first sighting, and the aliens' description from the screenplay:

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EXT. BARREN FOREST
Out of the corner of the scope, a flicker of movement. A shadow stuttering out of place. A shimmer...

Clay scans the trees with the scope-- and finds an elk. It stands at attention; its ears flit in all directions; this wasn’t the movement he saw. But whatever it was, the elk sensed it too.

INT. HUNTER’S HIDE
With his eye still down the scope, Clay unbuttons his breast pocket and pulls out his hearing aid.

He fits the hearing aid mold into his ear canal.

The skull connector dangles behind his ear, disconnected. And before he can connect it--

EXT. BARREN FOREST
Down the scope, Clay sweeps across a FIGURE. He centers it:

It’s bipedal and tall. Spindly like the naked branches around it. Skin like petrified wood. A somewhat triangular head rests upon what should be a neck. Deep-set, black eyes stare out vacantly behind lateral blinking eyelids.

It motions with a long finger from one of the many appendages attached to double-joints at its shoulders--

And SIX MORE CREATURES step in unison in line behind it. These creatures are not of Earth.

Unknown and unknowable. They are ALIENS.

INT. HUNTER’S HIDE
Clay lurches back, but keeps his eye to the scope.
The aliens walk with careful steps, angled away from Clay.

EXT. BARREN FOREST
Through the scope, Clay spots another figure: A HUMAN GIRL. Unconscious, or at least unmoving. At worst: dead.

One of the aliens has a firm grasp on her, carrying her in its branch-like arms on its back like we might hold a sleeping child to our chest--

ALL AT ONCE THE ALIENS TURN TO FACE CLAY AND FREEZE IMMOBILE.
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So, that's when the main character first lays eyes on the aliens and sees a young girl who was thought to be dead in the arms of one of the aliens.

The aliens freezing, staring at the main character, at us, is the image I'd love to capture.

A bit more about them, beside being branchy, wood-like, multiple-limbed yet bipedal, their modus operandi is camouflage. Camouflage is these aliens’ greatest asset. To that end, they produce an inaudible but perceptible sound that erases them from human sight in real time. A sound we barely hear. (The main character can only see them when his hearing aid is removed and he is effectively deaf.)

They are also very much a collective. They are able to link with one another in order to heal each other. From the screenplay:

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The other aliens spread their thin appendages out behind them like skeletal wings, linking with each other like the downed alien is linked with the girl.
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That linking ability is also something they use to link with humans in order to study us, control us, immobilize us. And, in turn, we then become a part of their collective.

So, there you have it. I'm excited to see what's in my head and on the page become beautiful, evocative art. Tangible. Hauntingly real.

And while I do want to show these creatures and represent the film's tone, don't be afraid of the power of suggestion, obfuscation, camouflage. Make us study the image. Scare us. Show us the unexpected.

Thank you, again. I've attached a few reference images I used while writing, but feel free to take or leave anything there. I'm coming to you for a reason: to create, not copy.

I can't wait to see what's coming.