by Jeff Cupernell

This scene depicts Ripley's rescue of the surviving Colonial Marines form the atmosphere possessing station .

The diorama uses the Halcyon APC kit and AEF designs Aliens figures and at least two major conversions. The figure of Ripley used a commercial head that was re sculpted to look more like Sigourney Weaver. The body was scratch built. Almost all of the AEF figures were reworked. New heads were made for all figures expect for Vasques. That was the only head that actually looked like the actress that played the part. All others were off the shelf spare heads that bore a likeness of the actor or were reworked spare heads. The head on the Hudson figure was re sculpted to look more like Bill Paxton. The figure of Burke in the door of the APC was made using some old spare parts and a commercial spare head with new Duro hair; the costume was sculpted in Duro and magic sculpt. Some details were sculpted on to the figures such as Drake's necklaces of bones and his braids of leather and bone on his cap. The headsets for the smart gunners were scratch built form wire and plastic The figures were painted in water based acrylics.

The aliens were assembled from parts supplied in the AEF kits but were sometimes modified to fit the pose that I need them in. Even though though the kits were old I was still able to re-pose the tails by heating them up with hot water. These kits are about 20 years old now and I was afraid that the resin would be to brittle to do this.

The APC has a full interior. Though it can hardly be seen there is a figure of Gorman on the inside sitting at his station. I put in more then I needed to but I wanted to cover my bases just in case some one was really looking around the figure of Burke in the door, or past the figure of Ripley in the driver's seat.

The atmosphere station was built using some spare Saturn V kits and plastic I beam parts; some K&S brass and aquarium filters form the grating on the upper deck. The hive was sculpted out of yellow foam and then coated in epoxy after it had set. I put them in place and used magic sculpt to blend the foam into the the structure. Some of the pipe work was done using PVC form the hardware store. Small details were made form spare parts.

Image: Front view

Image: Peeking out the door

Image: Trouble

Image: Above