Project Drop Dead Legs

Sitting here relaxing after a long day of trying to get the Haunted Trail back into storage – heavy stuff is taken care of now, so it shouldn’t take too many more days. In between this effort I have actually been able to get a couple of easy 5 mile runs in as I try to get the crust shook off from the ultra race a couple of weeks back. My running coach (aka Brad’s wife) has ordered me to take a couple of days off to let the body heal. I am physically (maybe more mentally) unable to just sit and relax which means it’s post time! Been trying to focus more on the Mothership this month to appease the less “wild” side readers out there. Cannot think of a better time to tackle another Haunted Trail prop project.

Hit the jump to learn all about how this giant spider (and his brother) came about. Note, you are forewarned as these posts get into the nitty details and until I get proficient at the video format I’m stuck with stills…lots and lots of stills.

Two of the four signature props for this year were the tombstones which I already covered (link here) and this set of 8 foot spiders – yes, two of them because more is always scarier. We have a fairly expansive spider scene on the Haunted Trail, but this year’s theme was “bigger”. Massive spiders were just the ticket. I do not do a lot pre-planning when it comes to props for the trail. Once the concept is figured out, a rough sizing is planned and then into the lab. Based on the success of the Pumpkin Arch (link here), decided to go with spray foam for the new spider forms.

Using the same beach ball approach to the forms as in the Pumpkin Arch, I quickly created shells for the spider bodies. In this case, I elongated the shells by taking each half shell further down the beach balls making more of a pill shape. I also switched to the larger pro version of the foam canisters. They do not have the standard Loctite foam in that format, rather a fire retardant version (orange) and the flexible window seal format (white). I am not happy with the fire version – less expansion and switched to the window seal version once that can ran out.

To stiffen up the forms, added support foam beads to help the thinner shells keep their form.

The two halves were then put together with more spray foam. The two front parts were the same size, but the back abdomen parts were built using different sized beach balls just to add distinction between the to spiders. With the shells done, started to build the inner structures to hold the foam body parts. 3/4 PVC pipe has become my preferred medium for my Poseys (link here), so went with that for these spiders. Assumed they would need to be staked into the ground to keep them from blowing away. Took several stabs at a leg structure and came up with a compact layout that fit the foam structures. Just noticed I took this image before I realized I had put the leg structure together wrong. Ignore the layout in this next picture – there is a better one coming up.

Once structure was built, cut the bottom of the smaller body spheres to sit flat on the PVC structure.

Next step was to build a structure that would hold the abdomen at an upward angle to the front pill purely based on a few pictures I had seen of various spiders on the web. Fiddled around with some PVC pieces and came up with a method to raise the back up and still connect to the front part.

Took a bit of time to come up with the full structure. I wanted an upright pipe to hold the front foam part up and then needed a way to connect the two foam pills together. Also needed a way to make these freestanding while I worked on them so added feet to the support downpipes. Each frame had to be custom fit to the two sizes of abdomen.

Here is the front view. Also note, this is the fixed structure for the 8 legs – evenly spaced and compact as I could get.

For reference, here is the structures apart. Note, I had to cut holes in the back abdomen to hold both the support in the back that kept it at the elevated angle and then a hole in the end in order to mate it with the front section of the body.

Here is what it looks like assembled from the side.

…and from the front.

Just to give a relative size difference, here are the two spiders side by side.

Although the structures were custom to each size, I did try to keep the angle of the back abdomen the same.

Now time to start working on the legs. In order to decrease the storage footprint, I wanted to used PVC connectors rather than simply using a heatgun to bend the legs into the desired angles. Decided I wanted 7 foot long legs on the larger spider and 6.5 foot ones on the smaller version with a bend somewhere near the middle. This took some time figuring out what angles I could get with 45’s and 90’s. At the time I wanted all the legs to touch the ground at the feet.

Eventually figured out a pattern that matched my vision. A combination of 45s at the base and 90s near the midpoint of the legs.

Test fit to see how they looked with the foam shells on – mainly just to get the clearance distances for the legs.

Then put the abdomens on to check the clearance for the back legs.

I stepped away from it for awhile as I started work on the tombstones. During that time I decided the spiders needed to be lifted off the ground to give them a more intimidating feel. Opted to go up a foot, so lengthened the down supports on both sections by that amount. There were some serious concerns about the impact that would have on the legs as I still wanted those to reach the ground. Lucked out as I just needed to adjust the 45 angles at the base and then tweak the angle of the midpoints to get them to touch the ground again.

Here is a front shot, so you can see the adjusted angles and the feet touching the ground with the body raised up.

A big difference between the pumpkin forms in the arch and the ones for the spiders is I opted to keep them textured rather than sanding them smooth. This gave a more “spidery” feel at the cost of absolute pain in the ass during the paint phase. Used an air sprayer and ended up putting at least 7 coats on trying to get every nook and cranny – also the fire retardant foam struggled to hold the paint. Eventually got enough coverage to call it done.

The plan all along was to have fuzzy legs. What I didn’t expect was fake fur being so expensive. Ended up getting it at Hobby Lobby, but tried to buy the bare minimum to cover the 16 legs. Using chalk, cut strips for each of the legs.

Plan was to create sleeves that I could slide over and off each leg allowing me to break the legs down for compact storage.

Now that the width was figured out, went about cutting out pieces for all the legs.

For ease, just used hot glue to connect the two ends to make the sleeves.

Test fit worked out perfect!

Repeated this process for each of the 15 remaining legs.

…from the front.

Now time to add the painted shells.

I must say, these were turning out exactly as envisioned.

They were looking pretty plain, so decided to add some embellishments. Laid out a pattern with string in order to get clean lines on the curved shells. Used fluorescent paint to add on the details. I forgot how hard it is to get coverage with flourescent paint and spent forever trying to get it to cover the black.

Not exactly happy with how this first one turned out – figured it would look okay in the dark with the UV lights on it.

For the other one I put a base coat of bright yellow acrylic down first before adding in the fluorescent yellow paint on top. That looked a LOT better.

With the legs out of the way and the shells embellished it was time to add fangs, well, I guess they are really feelers (pedipalps) and not fangs in my case. I may add fangs in the future, for now just going with these more prominent features. Needed a way to connect it to the structure, so added beige PVC caps to the front of the frame.

Used some scrap pieces of 1.5″ foam to make the feelers. Pinned each pair together to shape them so they were identical.

Glued PVC pipes in the top ends of each one so I could attach them to the caps on the frame. Covered them with the same leg fur and then that part was out of the way.

In the final innings now! During this entire build to this point, I was thinking about the eyes. While picking out the fur at Hobby Lobby, I noticed they were putting up their Christmas inventory – for the record, this ticks me off to no end. We are at least 7 weeks away from Halloween and they are already putting up stuff for THREE holidays away. It did get me thinking about using clear ornaments for the eyes…then remembered they make two-piece clear ornaments for various Christmas crafts. Went back to Hobby Lobby and found them – picked out two sizes – two large ones for each spider with 4 smaller ones. From research on the Internet, spider eye configurations are all over the board. Decided I would make my own spider eye layout using 6 (admittedly, 8 seems to be the more common number). If anyone noticed I’d just say they were mutant spiders…their 8′ long after all ha.

In my research, did learn that Arachnids do not have pupils. To help keep from scratches, decided to paint the inside of the clear shells. Went with fluorescent paint with the idea to put lights in them. Eyes were made for each of the spiders matching their embellishment color.

Honestly, I cannot think of any Halloween prop I’ve created that I haven’t used my 3D Printer in some fashion (at least in the last 5 or 6 years). It occurred to me that I might need to replace the lights inside the eyes if something went wrong. That meant I needed to be able to easily remove the eye covers to get to them. Designed and printed up a coupling system – one side glued to the spider shell and the other glued into the inside of the eye shell.

They could then simply be twisted on or off!

Placement was going to be a bit tricky. For one, I was having to put these on an uneven curved surface – getting symmetry was going to be difficult. The other desire was to keep from it looking like a smiley face. Finally made a decision to squish the face tighter to keep from looking too smiley. Created a template to help me keep the layout on the curved surface.

Put wooden food skewers in the center positions of each of the template eyes.

Then I could replace the full template with eye cutouts that match the diameter of the painted eye shells.

Did this for each of the spider faces – note, I used the embellishment pattern to help set the center line for the eye template.

With the eye placement figured out, I used a Dremel to flatten out the shell so the connector would sit flat.

Hot glued the base of the eye connectors into the flattened out area for each eye.

The connector design worked perfectly, simply pressed each eye up to the corresponding coupler and gave it a small twist to lock it on.

You will also notice the feelers were covered with fur now.

..and just for completeness, here is the yellow spider with its eyes on and furred feelers attached.

I had to chuckle when I noticed a Wolf Spider on one of my new spider legs. Can’t imagine what must have been going through that spider’s brain when he came upon these 8′ versions.

Not covered here, but I changed the leg base to only use one downpipe – the back one so it was less noticeable. Also painted them black so they wouldn’t be seen at night.

Here is the larger spider out on the trail. Oh, forgot to mention, the eye paint looked so good under UV light that I opted to not go the extra step and add eye lights. Just need to put one of the UV bombs (link here) in front to illuminate the eyes (white PVC light directly in front of the spider).

..and its slightly smaller brother.

A wider shot showing them side by side waiting for any unsuspecting victims come haunt night.

All told, these ended up being a lot of work. Worth it in my book as I think they looked awesome on the trail and we received a lot of good comments from the guests. This even became one of our favorite shots from the event.

Hope you enjoyed this rather lengthy run through for one of this year’s new Haunted Trail additions. Stay tuned for the rest of the 2023 trail additions.