Production designer J. Michael Riva had worked with Richter before and spent two years working on the look for Banzai. He and Richter studied many kinds of art and literature for the film's look, including medical journals, African magazines, and Russian history. The inspiration for the look of the Lectroids came from Riva sporting a lobster on his nose. He based the Lectroids' alien form on Canadian-American paleontologist Dale Russell 's " dinosauroid ", an extrapolation of what dinosaurs might have evolved into if they had survived, but modified the concept because it would have required prosthetics that would have immobilized the actors. Their makeup consisted of 12 separate pieces of latex appliances per alien. Each actor's makeup was unique, with casts taken of their faces. For the Red Lectroids, Riva consulted Russian history to give them a "baggy-suited, Moscow bureaucrat sort of image"; their outfits were influenced by contemporary Russian lifestyles and they went with greens, blues and yellows because, according to Riva, they are "sick and anemic."