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\nMaine Today Photo Store<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\nHe had injuries from a fall at his home in Zurich. Members of his family confirmed his death.<\/p>\n
Giger\u2019s surrealistic monster – part dragon, part machine, part erotic fantasy \u2013 helped \u201cAlien\u201d win an Academy Award for best visual effects. His eyeless monster is a vision of pure malevolence, with an elongated head and neck, a powerful tail and two pairs of jaws with tyrannosaurus-like teeth.<\/p>\n
It was a \u201cperfect organism,\u201d in the words of the doomed spacecraft\u2019s science officer, played by actor Ian Holm. \u201cIts structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.\u201d<\/p>\n
Before directing \u201cAlien,\u201d Scott had seen a copy of Giger\u2019s 1977 book, \u201cNecronomicon,\u201d a collection of elaborately drawn artworks of otherworldly figures, fusing mechanical and biomorphic shapes. Giger\u2019s images, often painted by airbrush, have a way of evoking terror and dread, of being revolting and seductive at the same time.<\/p>\n
\u201cI nearly fell over,\u201d Scott told London\u2019s Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2012.<\/p>\n
One of the producers of \u201cAlien,\u201d after seeing Giger\u2019s art, reportedly said, \u201cThis man is sick.\u201d<\/p>\n
But when Scott received the assignment to direct the movie, he immediately knew his designer would have to be Giger: \u201cI\u2019d never been so certain about anything in all my life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The film, based on a story by Dan O\u2019Bannon and Ronald Shusett, takes place aboard the Nostromo, a commercial spaceship returning to Earth in a future century, with tons of minerals. Also on board are slowly incubating eggs, one of which hatches into the alien creature. In its fully adult form, the monster was portrayed by a 7-foot-2 student wearing a specially made costume.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlien\u201d was only the second feature film for Scott, who went on to direct \u201cBlade Runner,\u201d \u201cThelma & Louise\u201d and \u201cBlack Hawk Down.\u201d It made a star of actress Sigourney Weaver and in 2008 was ranked by the American Film Institute as the seventh-best science-fiction film of all time. But, in a real sense, the movie\u2019s most dominant character was Giger\u2019s unsettling creature.<\/p>\n
\u201cI loved the script, but on one level it was a B-movie,\u201d Scott told the Newark Star-Ledger in 2003. \u201cThe monster has to be great, otherwise, you haven\u2019t got a good film. We got a great monster, and I never questioned anything else.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hans Rudolf Giger was born Feb. 5, 1940, in Chur, Switzerland. He said he had a carefree childhood, but he did deliver leeches for his father, a pharmacist, and often visited a local museum that displayed a mummy.<\/p>\n
Giger studied architecture and industrial design at a college in Zurich and became a full-time artist in the 1960s, influenced by the surrealist painter Salvador Dali, fantasy artist Ernst Fuchs and the horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft.<\/p>\n
Giger\u2019s longtime girlfriend and frequent early model, Swiss actress Li Tobler, committed suicide in 1975. A later marriage to Mia Bonzanigo ended in divorce.<\/p>\n
Survivors include his wife, Carmen Scheifele-Giger, who is the director of a museum devoted to Giger\u2019s art in Gruyeres, Switzerland.<\/p>\n
In addition to his work on \u201cAlien,\u201d Giger also contributed designs to \u201cPoltergeist II\u201d (1986), \u201cAlien 3\u201d (1992) and \u201cSpecies\u201d (1995). He and Scott revisited the \u201cAlien\u201d franchise in 2012 with the film \u201cPrometheus.\u201d<\/p>\n
Giger was inducted into the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame in 2013 and has been a lasting influence on filmmakers, science-fiction painters and tattoo artists. He also designed furniture, jewelry and the interiors of two Swiss bars that bear his name.<\/p>\n
He created many album covers, including Emerson Lake & Palmer\u2019s \u201cBrain Salad Surgery\u201d (1973) and Debbie Harry\u2019s \u201cKooKoo\u201d (1981), as well as a custom-built microphone stand for Jonathan Davis, lead singer of the heavy-metal band Korn.<\/p>\n
In a rare interview, Giger said he was once stopped by customs agents in the Netherlands who thought his paintings of body parts and other hyper-sexualized images were photographs.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere on earth did they think I could have photographed my subjects?\u201d he said. \u201cIn hell, perhaps?\u201d
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