There’s not much to say here other than he’ll be SORELY missed. As an artist, his work scared the hell out of me many times and yet inspired me to experiment more with my own art without trying to emulate the man’s style one bit. His work on ALIEN, like the entire film holds up to this day to the point that I’ve recommended the movie over the years to people who didn’t know it was made back in 1979 (yep, even with those old computers and monitors in use!). Granted, you could say that classic was more the result of Ridley Scott’s solid direction, but he was absolutely inspired by Giger’s mind blowing art and there’s NO doubt at all it would have been a lesser film without it…

Even when he worked on films that weren’t so hot (Species, anyone?), his style stood out so much that these films were worth seeing just for whatever he contributed. Of course, many effects teams and artists tried extremely hard to capture his style and make it their own, but nearly every attempt wasn’t as good as having the man himself on board painting, sculpting and making sure his work was well represented. Amusingly enough, some of that work Giger did on ALIEN was derived from work he’d done during the aborted attempt at getting Frank Herbert’s massive science fiction classic DUNE onto film from a few years earlier. That massive project (which also saw other artists who later found success with other genre films after things fell apart) is chronicled in a MUST see documentary, Jodorowsky’s DUNE, now playing perhaps at a theater near you (but also BUY the DVD or Blu-Ray when it comes out because it’s a fantastic movie about dreams plus the making and killing of them that’s worth multiple viewings). That’s one of a few not so hot versions of the titular creature by me, by the way. Anyway, so much for an otherwise fine Tuesday…