ALIENS are best designed with a combination of both creative and technical imagination. New materials and techniques are constantly being developed and incorporated alongside traditional creature effects:

• silicone rubber skins with newly developed capabilities for extended elasticity and translucence that bounce and wiggle as if alive.

• ultraviolet pigments that can cause colors and skin patterns to shift, glow and/or pulse when activated.

• light strips that can be cut in shapes and imbedded in translucent skins.

• air-filled plastic 'bag' tentacles, shapes and nodules that can inflate, deflate, writhe and move in strange ways.

• irises and orifices mechanically dilating and shifting in wild patterns.

• eyes glowing with light bulbs and parabolic mirrors cast into them, capable of extending way out off of the head on pneumatic stalks while still blinking and looking around.

The best aliens are those that arouse a sense of wonder in the unknown possibilities of otherworldly biologies and personalities.