Designing an alien is no easy task, and NASA certainly isn’t willing to drop a few clues. So, for most creatives, it’s up to the human mind to dream up what an alien might look like. Luckily for film-lovers, special effects creator Ray Harryhausen had quite the imagination.

Harryhausen provided the stop-motion animation effects for the 1964 film, First Men in the Moon. Harryhausen created a variety of aliens, including those called the Selenites, the “Moon Cows,” and the Grand Lunar.

In his book, The Art of Ray Harryhausen, the creator described the process of creating the extraterrestrials.

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“The Selenites, together with the mooncalves, were the animation stars of First Men in the Moon,” said Harryhausen. “I designed them as ant-like creatures because they lived ‘in’ the moon, harvesting their food from the huge caterpillar-like mooncalves. As I had begun with the concept of ant-like creatures, I designed the rest of their world…Keeping the interior sets simple, like a technological colony, made the story seem much more credible. Whenever I can, I do like to make consistent use of a single concept or theme throughout a film.”

Harryhausen revealed that when designing the Selenites, he based the creatures on ants.

“Their seign was intended to represent a body form that suited a subterranean, colonial existence in tunnels and caverns,” said Harryhausen. “Once I had the concept clear in my mind, I was able to render the Selenites on paper extremely quickly. Likewise, the mooncalf, which basically appeared as I had originally conceived it, except that I made it more menacing by equipping it with vicious mandibles with which it attacked the Lunar adventurers.”