Ovomorph (Alien Egg)

What

A full size replica of an alien egg from the films Alien and Aliens. I decided that the open variant looked more interesting, but so that it wouldn’t be a spent threat, I’d have the protective sac showing, meaning the Facehugger could be ready to pounce!

Inside the first on-screen egg from Alien (1979)

Why

Ever since I first saw “Aliens”, it was my favourite film and I obsessed over the beautiful scary aliens.
I did try making an alien egg around 1995 using an orange plastic tub, chicken wire and papier-mâché. I seem to recall there were too many pockets of air in the model and it was a bit kind of spongey and rubbish before I finished it, so I just binned it. I would have put this in the Abandoned Projects section, but I didn’t have a single photo of it, so I couldn’t really do that.

When

Summer 2025.

The Queen Alien’s giant ovipositor laying another horrific egg on LV-426

Development & Progress

Instead of starting from scratch, I bought digital models of an open and a closed egg, then modelled adjustments to get the form I wanted.

Using Blender, I added texture, widened the opening, expanded the “petals,” and corrected the overall shape.

I cut the model into 36 parts my 3D printer could handle, and added a cylindrical internal hole intended for attaching to a buried pipe if I later choose to put it in my garden for stability and anti-theft purposes.

I modelled hundreds of holes for dowels to act as key points and joints. Even with duplication and rotation this took ages, as the egg was not entirely radially symmetrical.

Next up was preparing each chunk in Cura, with settings that would provide enough speed and strength without using way too much plastic filament.

I decided to start with the top first and this was the first piece in progress. Parts took up to 24 hours each to print and things went well for a while

Then things went very wrong — a late-stage layer shift made this unusable. Slowing it down didn’t fix it. Then it wouldn’t even print the first layer without failing.

I disassembled and adjusted or replaced more parts on this printer than I could even begin to count. It was colossally depressing to get nowhere with it, day after day. I was so close to thinking I’d have to buy a replacement.

However, after 10 weeks, much stress and not inconsiderable expense, I eventually had 36 chunks of 3D printed PLA plastic.

This was the first loose test assembly, excluding the inner (sac) section of section 4.

The sections would be glued as half sections of each layer so that the two halves could be put together as the last stage.

One half assembled. As layer 4 was staggered, and capped, it wouldn’t be attached at this stage.

The two main halves just before being put together. There were a lot of things to line up and there are always minor shifts and differences.

I did get the two parts together though, and then I was able to add the capped sac section.

The next stage was a lot of join-filling and sanding. This was my first time using a two-part epoxy clay called *Milliput*, which is mixed up until the two colours are one, then it sets rock-hard in about 3 hours. Great stuff.

I’d typically spray with primer before each round of sanding, so I could more easily see how much was needed to be added or removed.

Apart from concealing the seams, I also felt that the texture still wasn’t distinct enough, so I added more blotches with Milliput. I hadn’t finished doing either by this point, but it was improving.

The seams weren’t sorted yet and the top not attached yet, but I painted the pink parts. The colour wasn’t right, but I knew they’d be getting a yellow tinge from the varnish later.

The “petal” section after seams were filled and with some of the white veins added.

The sac section with some veins and varnish. If I did another of these, I think I’d try to figure out a way of making the veins better. But. meh.

The top was ready to be attached and the seam filled. I was still adding further spots and occasionally adding some build up of colour.

A part I was worried about was the paint job, because I don’t have an airbrush or the required skills. So sponging would be my main method. There were different layers of greys, browns and a bit of green mixed in.

Paint job done, but further varnishes required. I’m fairly pleased with the colouration and texture.

On Location

This industrial setting was as close as I could find to a sci-fi environment.

Obligatory idiot getting too close to an obviously ominous egg.

In the Coach & Horses, one of the pubs I can see from my house.

On the main street of my town of Rothwell, Leeds, UK.

Stats

Weight: 15.3Kg
Height: 800mm
Diameter: 600mm
Materials: PLA plastic, Wood Dowels, Milliput epoxy clay, Spray Paint, Acrylic Paint, Varnishes
Design / PC prep duration: 30 – 40 hours
Print Duration: 600 – 700 hours
Cost: Maybe a bit more than £200

Later / Current Status

At the time of creating this page, it’s brand new, so too soon to say.

Thoughts on the Alien Universe

I first saw at least some of Alien (1979) as a young child, but I was too young to appreciate it. Later though, I recognised that the look and design of the film was tremendous. The tech, the sets, the alien life stages. It was great because it kept things simple and believable. A small crew, a plausible situation gone bad, one brilliant, scary threat. The terror built slowly in claustrophobic iconic sci-fi corridors, but what made it work was that the characters made sensible choices based on what they knew or could do. It was dark, mysterious, shocking, and you could feel the terror they did. Ridley Scott did an amazing job.

The franchise truly captivated me when I saw Aliens (1986), a year or so after its release. I’ve watched it more times than I can count, and it remains one of the most compelling and perfectly crafted films I’ve ever seen. The pacing, characters, practical effects, music, sets and performances were all flawless. And the finale introduced the most terrifyingly beautiful film creature I’ve ever seen: the magnificent Queen. It all combined into something untouchable. I know the film inside out, but every rewatch still leaves me in awe, even if some of the tech looks dated. Alien was a tremendous beginning, but for me Aliens is the high-water mark.

The decline began with Alien 3 (1992). Killing off Hicks and Newt was soul-destroying, and the boring, brown, tech-free prison setting made me hate it for years. Over time, I’ve come to terms with it, partly because everything that followed was somehow worse.

Resurrection(1997) is barely even worth mentioning beyond saying it added nothing of value. The fourth film tried to be tongue in cheek at times, and the premise of a Ripley clone having taken on some of the alien’s traits and even Ripley’s memories was stupid. The end creature was brutally poor.

Then after waiting for 15 years, the modern era, dominated by Ridley Scott’s return and meddling, gave us Prometheus (2012) and Covenant (2017). Both were disasters in my opinion. They trampled over everything that made the franchise work and insulted basic science. Aside from some nonsensical astro-mapping, the Engineers supposedly seeded life on Earth with their magic black goo, casually retconning billions of years of actual evolution. Suddenly Darwin and every shred of accepted biology are irrelevant because some albino bodybuilder dissolved himself in a waterfall. It is insulting nonsense. Worse still, this goo behaves however the plot demands. Sometimes it creates spores or worms, sometimes zombies, sometimes squid-beasts, sometimes it just melts people. There are no rules, no logic, no consistency, only a lazy all-purpose sludge that replaces the grounded terror of the xenomorph life cycle.

Then there are the characters, who might be the stupidest ever written in serious sci-fi. Scientists remove their helmets on alien worlds, poke at deadly-looking organisms, and wander into danger with the common sense of toddlers. Guy Pearce is buried under laughably bad old-man makeup when they could have just hired an older actor. The medical pod that can only operate on men, as if men and women are two different species, is equally absurd. Casual major surgery followed by a quick jog? Give me strength. Add Scott’s obsession with androids and his endless urge to shoehorn in existential philosophy, and you’re left with films that are pretentious without being profound, incoherent instead of mysterious. I didn’t just find them irritating, I was genuinely angry. Covenant somehow managed to be even worse than Prometheus.

Romulus (2024) was such a let-down because it couldn’t resist drowning itself in unnecessary fan-service. The callbacks were constant and painfully on-the-nose The android Rook was identical to Ash from the first film and there was no reason for that, other than just another reference to an earlier much better film. It felt cheap and cynical rather than clever. Add to that characters who supposedly spent their lives on a Blade Runner-style moon, yet somehow sound more like the Artful Dodger than hardened colonists. Then there’s the black-goo physics defying mutant end boss, a newborn-engineer-slenderman hybrid, which just about summed up the lack of imagination of the whole film.

The script was littered with other irritations. CRT monitors working after being shot. Facehuggers unable to detect moving people in a warm room, as stupid as pretending a smear of mud could hide you from a Predator. Planetary rings treated like solid objects. A duff android demonstrated with a speech impediment, because for some reason, we’re still recycling that tired trope. Also, his programming is conveniently adjustable whenever the plot needs it. Weyland-Yutani are missing an enormous space station and it casually drops into orbit And they fail to intervene when enslaved kids go muck about on it. Nonsense piled on nonsense, with Ridley Scott’s fingerprints all over it.

The positives don’t redeem it. Cailee Spaeny was excellent, the sets were gorgeous, and I appreciated the acknowledgement of a need for artificial gravity for the first time in the whole franchise, even if it was used as a device for having to dodge conveniently dispersed acid. It was nowhere near as bad as Prometheus or Covenant , but that’s the faintest praise imaginable.

Across these films, the same problems keep surfacing: lazy reliance on Ripley, the cartoon-evil Weyland-Yutani, malignant androids, or contrived creature variants, instead of trusting the raw terror of the xenomorph life cycle. Characters are written as idiots, and world-building inconsistencies pile up.

I remain deeply invested. I’ve bought the posters, books, and discs. I’ve made artwork and models. I’ve travelled to exhibitions. The xenomorph has fascinated me for decades, and I’d love nothing more than to see the franchise to innovate and thrive again. But when I can only genuinely love two out of seven canonical films, the chances of film-series recovery feel slim.

I like to imagine a brave new story that breaks free of the tired formulas. A film without humans at all, focusing on xenomorphs and another non-humanoid alien species. Of course, this would be seen as suicide by the studio. A subtitled or non-verbal film about non-humanoid aliens and xenomorphs could be bold and terrifying. Sadly, studios would never take that risk, preferring callbacks, safe formulas, predictable character types and a misplaced faith in Scott’s vision.

But even if we have to include humans (which they always will), there are many more things that could gross or creep us out without introducing new life stages or creatures. Why not explore xenomorph instincts beyond killing, like the building of hives and cocoon and other unsettling behaviours?

In the end, I’ll always love Aliens. It is a truly brilliant film. But for me, the wider franchise has been irreparably damaged.

But again, Noah Hawley has disregarded the content of the 2012 and 2017 films and that feels like a better lifeboat than the Narcissus.