.That's what I meant. From scratch as in ignoring everything other than what ended up in the film. It wasn't intended as a criticism..rather starting from scratch as seems to be the case here.
Not scratch, my friend -- the movie.
The movie we're all fans of.
That's an interesting point. Depends on the definition of "scratch building", I suppose.
From my perspective, what Graham does is a lot of scratch building, too, in a sense -- he adds elevators, a second shuttle, docking tube, science labs, and various features never seen or even hinted at in any material ... "greeblies" that mainly make sense to him, I suspect.
He also does a bit of the same kind of scratch building that I do, like the hanging feature containing the airlock and observation blister, that is in direct contradiction with how the set is built, but becomes necessary to rationalise what we see on-screen.
For me, it is easier -- not to mention, a lot more fun! -- to take the movie at verbatim, use production material (like set drawings) as supporting material only where appropriate, and then go from there, shooting for the most screen accurate representation that I can make. In my mind, the film is the only source material that it actually is necessary to stay true to, to the furthest extent possible.
For example, the film very explicitly states that the Nostromo is a "commercial towing vehicle", so for me, that means that is what she is. So, not a "modified transport" -- ergo, no cargo holds; nor any extensive scientific facilities.
In the film, Ripley descends a gangway to get from the bridge to the infirmary. So, these two compartments are on different decks -- ergo, the "A-Deck" set (and by implication, the other "Deck" sets as well) must depict more than one level on board the ship.
The sequence of turns Ripley takes to reach the Narcissus from Engineering necessitates that the approach to the shuttle must come from inside the port nacelle -- which makes the port landing gear well the most logical location for the cocooning scene.
And so on.
By contrast, I can feel a lot of (primarily the fan-made) later material wants to go much too far the other way: ignoring what did end up in the film -- taking the whole mass of the production material (including early concepts, screenplay drafts, etc) more at verbatim than the film itself, and where discrepancies occur, dismissing the movie as being at fault: "Elevator sets cost money". "Oh, there will always be issues when you shoot a movie."
Sure, there are always issues -- but in my approach to this project, I at least try to resort to that rationalisation to as small an extent as I can.
But you did say at one point:
That got me curious. What did you have in mind?There's more internal artwork by Cobb depicting only three decks.