Introduction: Minecraft Spider Jockey Children's Costume With Moving Legs and Head
The purpose of this costume build, was to teach my son that not only
could we make anything we imagined, but also, that we could save money and make a better costume at the same time! We made this with extra stuff luring around the house, the only actual expense was in the paint we bought as it took a bit to paint everything, but this only cost us around $20 and we produced three costumes and three props! thanks for the look and read, and I'd you liked it please let me know! the greatest outcome I could image is to get a legit "I built that!"
Step 1: PREP
The entirety of the costume is cardboard boxes. You will find, that no matter what Minecraft themed costumes or projects that you partake in, you will need square boxes. NOT RECTANGULAR. Because of this, you will most likely end up making your own boxes.
I used a steel square that i bought at harbor freight to make square pieces of cardboard. Just be sure to leave flaps on the sides of your box squares to enable you to glue them together to form your cubes.
SUPPLIES:
Square
scissors or a razor knife for cardboard cutting
hot glue gun and elmer's glue
hobby paint and a tray to put it in
sponge
string
pipe insulation foam tubes
zip ties
a pencil
a black t shirt
and a whole mess of cardboard!!
Keep in mind when building your costume it will be modeled after a Minecraft character, they are made of several squares, so decide an appropriate scale for the amount of squares in the character's block's patterns and the size of the wearer. WE USED A SCALE OF 1.5" PER SQUARE. except on the redstone block for the enderman's arms and the skeleton head, which we made snug to stay on tight.
Step 2: Boxes! !!
After choosing our 1.5" scale, we set out to find boxes similar in size. it just so happened that 12 pack soda boxes make nearly perfect sized legs. so we approximated our box sizes for the spider body parts and skeleton head. we did this buy counting the individual squares in the games character maps and then multiplying by 1.5" to get the dimensions. then we trimmed down some old moving boxes and glued them together with Elmer ' s glue. we also used hot glue for reinforcement. when cutting down boxes, leave flaps to lay inside the edges for gluing. The middle section will fflex under the weight of the legs and the head, so be sure to add an "I" beam in the center of the box running front to back.(check the pics for this)
Step 3: Assembly
you may find painting is easier before assembly but it could really be done in either order. so get your hot glue gun and/or Elmer' s handy and attach your boxes together. You should have made at this point one box for each section of the characters. so that would be 3 boxes for the spider, and two legs and a head box for the skeleton. we glued in supports made from scraps to aid the spiders head hinge area and to stiffen the center body section of the spider. The head is hinged by leaving one of the five sides of the spiders head un glued from the others so that it can bob up and down. I would suggest using a singular zip tie between each pair of spider legs instead of using one individual ziptie loop glued to the support. this would prevent them from pulling off of the cardboard as ours did(pics).
Step 4: Paint
if you choose to paint after assembly, this is the time to get our your sponges. cut most any sponge into a 1.5" square, then apply your paint one square at a time, copying the image if the character from the game. or use your own color scheme! note, the spider's head is actually a hinged assembly, achieved by not gluing one side of the head in place. pic in next step!
Step 5: Cutting
now that the paint is dry, we can cut the holes for the spider legs and the holes for the controls. .you will need to mostly cut out the entire bottom of the large rear section of the spider to clear the costume wearer's legs. the smaller hole above is to clear the wearer's torso. small holes run between the boxes to pass the string controls through. also I used scraps of cardboard to reinforce the hinge at the neck. the legs are long sections of pipe wrapping foam from the hardware store. I cut them equally in length and hot glued them into the holes in the spider's middle body section. they have an adhesive strip built in to ease the seaming of the tube's lateral slit.
Step 6: Strings
now you want to run controls to make the head Bob up and down, and make the legs bow in and out. do this by using zip ties hot glued in place then attach string to them or pass it through them. the head has one line from inside the forehead to inside the rear body. tie a large loop of the string inside the body where the wearer sits, pull this in a short wasy tugging motin and the head bobs up and down. the legs each have a cardboard disc at the end, string attached to that via a zip tie glued to the cardboard. the string enters through the hollow end of the leg, pokes out through the bottom of the leg foam, and runs along the underside of the leg to the top, then it pokes back into the foam and into the middle body section through the middle hole of the foam tube. the legs feed together via supporting zip ties, discussed previously, that are glued to the middle box support. these are tied in a knot and loop to operate them all at once. pulling the bundle of strings causes the legs to all bow inward at the ends/feet. Then I added shoulder straps by hot gluing ribbon wrapped in t shirt scraps. in the future, a better build would have wider straps a little farther out from the wearers torso hole. Back pack straps would be ideal. they should enter the box through slits around the torso hole and be glued from inside. We also had to add weight to the rear inside the rear body box to keep the head off of the ground. keep this in mind when cutting your top hole, a little more forward may mean hitting your knees every so often but not having to add a lot of weight for counterbalance, meaning a lighter costume.
Step 7: Finalize
the skull helmet is as easy add making a square box and cutting slits for eyes, then painting. we made a torch and a bow also. will be adding them next! thanks for reading
Step 8: A Little More???
Of course, since this entire build was intended to show my son that we could make fantastic things for little money ourselves, my brother and i hopped into the action as well. Our only expense was the hobby paint so we were in about $20 bucks. We decided to stretch it further!!!. I was made into a Minecraft zombie and my brother was an enderman. Our head boxes didnt look right when fitted snugly, so we made them larger and fitted one with a recycled muffin plastic tub from our last supermarket trip, and the other with a baseball cap that we folded and glued the bill to the inside of the head. we then cut eye slits and painted them. Along with the heads, we needed accessories. For my son that meant a torch and a bow. We had a cheapo bow toy from the dollar store, so we moddified that by gluing cardboard cut outs to the sides of it to make it look Minecrafty! We also made a long rectangular sleeve and fitted an old flash light with the lense removed into it. his shirt which i dont have a pic of was easiest of all. we painted the sleeves white and used the square sponge paint technique to blot on the skeletal ribcage parts. We also made a pair of enderman arms that had zip ties through them to grab a hold of while using them. at the hands ends of the arms we looped a string through and passed it through the middle of the small redstone cube we made from scraps. we then cut slits into that cube, and glued some of the end pieces from glow bracelets inside the heads and all over the spider. we took some unused glow necklaces and bracelets and inserted them into the holders and the cube, so when they are used up we could pop them out and slide in new ones. when done the arms can be worn, and the user can swing the cube in a circle, then pull the arms tight apart from each other and spin the cube. much like the childrens toy with the string and the circle card.