Xeno costume from Aliens

I recently completed a full build Xeno costume after about 3 months of poking at it off and on when I'm home from traveling. I wanted to post my build, pics, and some lessons learned for anything attempting to undertake one of these amazing costumes! This costume is now COMPLETE but this is probably going to be a series of posts so I can walk everyone through the build here as sharing this with you is bringing a new joy to making Ajax. J. Alien.

Also, right now pics are being hosted on DropBox. Hopefully no issus arise, but PM me if things break and I will change image hosts.

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I started off ordering a full xeno kit from a friend who had an extra unfinished... I have been told these guys where initially cast from parts of the movie costume, and then modified over time. There are very few if any left to my knowledge unfinished, so finding a kit like this is EXCEPTIONALLY rare. $900 to start right here for one unfinished and this is a good deal from what I'm told by other xeno costumers.



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It was really my first costume needed a mannequin as I had managed to survive using myself as a model. A quick shot of my workshop on day one.




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Probably the hardest part of the build was putting together the torso harness in a way that was not going to weigh me down, but was also easy enough to take on and off. I didn't end up taking picture of the process but I used pvc pipe embedded in the back spines and attached them to a backpack I installed attached the the main back plate. Don't let the picture fool you there, there are about 20 coats of latex holding the seams together and making it look smooth. The attachments were rough to start with, but ended up great with some patience and liquid latex. I highly suggest investing in a good backpack or harness if you are going to build anything that has this much weight riding on your back at all times.



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I was anxious to get the parts painted and started plasti-dipping the parts in the first week; You would not believe how many cans of this stuff I end up going through; (I think in total I used 14 cans for the whole build). Here are a few paint shots. Even with the ventilator, I had to take frequent breaks and open my shop doors as I was spraying liquid plastic.









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There are so many of us running around now, we wear collars so that people can tell us apart; While the builds are all different, when you pack 10 of us together it's not only terrifying, but also you tend to lose track of who you are looking for. I went a 46" bright pink spiked collar. Here is a quick pick of a handful of Aliens @ the 2011 Aliens Convention. The picture is off the Stan Winston feed on Facebook and credit to Gareth Ellner (the one with the red collar) who I believe posted it first.







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I will post part II of the build later this week and cover the jumpsuit and attaching all the components to it with contact cement which I now know is very unforgiving if you decide to "I will just glue this one component in place when I have the suit on".

Here is a quick teaser pic of the start of the process:

loving this so far. I've always wanted a Xeno suit.

Dude that is F&$^ing awesome. Your right, if i seen a pack of your running around like that id freak out big time.

Haha that's awesome. I love the group of aliens together. That's just awesome!

semajarab said:

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WOW that is impressive. There is more Xenos there than in the actual film ALIENS.

I've been looking forward to these pictures for a while now and they don't dissapoint. This is crazy good.

that pic ... and the design/casting/painting are all insanely great.

Holy crap, amazing photos. And kick ass costumes! I would have LOVED to have come across that while wearing a USCM costume. What an awesome photo op that would have been.

unbelievable. That is outstanding.

I wish hoards of xenos hung out in my town...

NelBearPig said:

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I've been looking forward to these pictures for a while now and they don't dissapoint. This is crazy good.

^-^" this is the polite way of saying I'm terrible with pictures... which is very true!! I am planning on posting part 2 tonight to show how I crafted up the jumpsuit

McAullay said:

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Dude that is F&$^ing awesome. Your right, if i seen a pack of your running around like that id freak out big time.

Come to DragonCon then... last year the Xenos tend to wait around dark corners for people and surround unsuspecting Predators when possible.

Any idea what day at DC these guys might be walking around? I would LOVE to get a picture with them in my Ripley costume.

Risu said:

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Any idea what day at DC these guys might be walking around? I would LOVE to get a picture with them in my Ripley costume.

Most of us are meeting on up Friday night in the Hyatt bar area around 7:30 pm until late. Look for me... but if you are Ripley... don't worry... we will find you...

I'll be male Ripley, so I might be slightly harder to find. I'll mark down Ripley for Friday, though.

I can't wait to see more of this!!! I kind of want one now!!!

As promised, part II of the build. I had all the pieces at this point but I needed to find a way to affix them to a jumpsuit without burning up to death while wearing this costume... While I achived affixing them all, it's still hot inside when it's on.

I decided to go with a Morphsuit for the undersuit. There was a lot of talk about Chinese Zentai suits or even a divers suit... but I wanted something light and that would be easy to work with. About $45 at the local party city story.



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At first it was a royal pain attaching each individual rubber component to the mannequin, but as I kept going and made more progress, it all came together nicely. I took off the legs a few times and did some adjusting as I want to be able to crouch and walk comfortably. The biggest thing here is that I needed to use contact cement and you can't exactly do this while wearing the suit. (trust me, I found out the hard way on a few things).








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After I got all the body components on, I wanted to actually "seal up" the suit fully. Most Xenos actually just wear the suit as it, but I wanted a more uniform feel over the whole thing... When in doubt, latex. I found some amazingly strong liquid latex and started painting the suit. I ended up spraying it down with Plasti-dip as well as dying the 2nd and 3rd coats black so the whole suit now has a uniform look and feeling. The parts no longer look glued on, but just part of a larger suit. This gives a number of problems, biggest being is that I not have essentially zero ventilation. I looks damn good though, so goal 1 accomplished. Don't worry, it's all a nice solid black now, I just did not take any pictures after I did the 4 coats of latex on there. It's all essentially one large latex suit at this point.









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I wanted to work a bit more on the head, so I ordered a solid cast set of rubber teeth from one of the brits who does Aliens work. Before he looked a little buck toothed, but now he looks mean!



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Lastly I had to extend the torso piece. Being an American I'm told we "have unusually large chest from working out too much". I had to extent the chest so I did the same latex -> plasti dip job on the front as well as adding a zipper for easy access on and off.





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That's it for part II. I will finish off later this week with the remainder of the build along with a few pics of me wearing Ajax to the grocery store going out for the first time.

Looking really nice!
Great job

Nobby said:

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Looking really nice!
Great job

Thanks! I will be sharing part III - head and harness build and part IV - finalizing + final pictures hopefully sometime this week.

A xeno is on my "to do" list for future costumes.

How do you find it to wear?

I love my ninja turtle, but it's a complete sweatbox and I can only last for 30 mins at a time with it on.

dArtagnan said:

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A xeno is on my "to do" list for future costumes.

How do you find it to wear?

I love my ninja turtle, but it's a complete sweatbox and I can only last for 30 mins at a time with it on.

I wore it for the opening night of Prometheus @ a Regal theatre which was amazing air conditioned... that being said, I feel like I almost died. *seriously* I was probably standing in 4 liters of sweat at the end of the night and on more than one occasion started to black out.

I'm fixing this by adding in meshing on both sides for ventilation, as well as adding a camel-bak for hydration into the backback, and some slits to put in long cold packs of water.

The handler that goes with me can carry these and change them out as we go as needed.

Very very cool.

awsome,would love to have one of these hiding around the house

or hiding around the corn field.

Ok folks, final installment of this thread; Sorry about slacking for a few days here. Since I'm also too lazy to scroll up in this thread to see where I left off, looks like you get more pictures.

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I needed to pain Ajax's teeth to make him look more menacing.. A basic color pallette of grey, silver, black, white and more black were used. It turned out pretty good for the first run. I need to age them a bit from biting though.





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Afterwards I really needed to get the whole thing assembled, so I tossed the head on and moved forward getting the tail attached. I needed to be able to quick attach/detach the tail, so I used a quick belt hooking system that will eventually be covered by a flap / my back harness.





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Here are a few quick pics of Ajax from the front/side pre/post tail.







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Now that he is done, a quick trip to the park with my daughter to test him out.














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Finally, back at the house soaked in sweat.








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Ok folks, that's it!! So much I didn't cover in here, so if anyone has questions please PM me. I loved making this build, and I'm going to love it even more scaring people and having fun at conventions to come!!

If you see me @ DragonCon or NYCC this year, I'm in the pink/red collar with spikes. Feel free to say hi!!

- James

Looking so awesome! I will link your gifs for you