Kraken Attack!
Introduction: Kraken Attack!
Considering the ongoing pandemic, we knew we needed a Halloween theme that wasn't too morbid or gory. When my daughter suggested a kraken attacking a pirate ship, we thought the theme would be fun and dramatic enough to be eye-catching and Halloweeny without reminding anyone of coronavirus.
Step 1: The Design
Our kraken attack started with these very rough sketches.
Next I had to figure out how to actually MAKE it. I'd made a mast out of PVC pipes for a pirate party years ago, so I knew what to do there -- and I decided to stretch wires between our house and our front wall and drape blue fabric over it to look like waves. Those were easy enough... but how to sculpt the beast itself?
After a little research on sculpting materials, I decided to try expanding spray foam, which I'd never used before. I wanted something lightweight and easy to carve, and while I was tempted to use sheets of upholstery foam, the sheer quantity I'd need for a sprawling build like this was going to get expensive.
Step 2: Forming the Head and Body
I didn't take pictures of the first steps here, but it started with a large shipping box that I cut down into a wedge shape so the front was much shorter than the back. I taped two long strips of cardboard (for the face tentacles) to the front.
I sprayed a couple cans of expanding foam into the box and along the tops of the tentacles and it did expand impressively! It not only filled the space but erupted out the top.
(I feel like I must add a short note at this point for anyone who hasn't used expanding foam before: Work outside with good ventilation, wear a mask and gloves, and cover the area under and around your build with sheets of cardboard or plastic to catch any leaks -- this is SERIOUSLY sticky stuff and very hard to clean off if it gets somewhere you don't want it!)
I let it dry overnight, then turned the body onto its side and sprayed it (and the sides of the tentacles) with a thick layer of foam. 644
After a few hours it was dry enough to repeat the process on the other side.
The next day I flipped it on its front and gave the back a layer of foam, a well as trying to build up the top and back of the head.
Step 3: Building Tentacles
While I was waiting for the spray foam to dry I tested a few ways to make tentacles. I had hoped to make them flexible, so it looked like they were alive, though in the end it didn't work out that way.
In case anyone's curious, I considered and opted against:
* carved soft foam covered in liquid latex (not strong enough)
* carved spray foam covered in paint (still not flexible, texture looked too foamy)
* fabric stuffed with polyester filling covered in either latex or paint (too likely to get waterlogged if it rained)
* jointed foam tubes (not flexible enough to be worth the massive hassle of making them)
* tentacles moving by a motor hidden under the fabric "sea" (too technically difficult with limited time)
* tentacles tethered to an overhead beam and operated like a marionette (maybe next year!)
In the end I decided on large foam tubes used for insulating pipes. They were super cheap, lightweight and fairly flexible.
I cut heavy wire the length of each one, fed it through the middle and bent it to anchor at each end. Then I bent and twisted each tentacle into a curved shape. In one case I stuck two foam tubes together to make a much longer tentacle.
I made a total of five this way, plus two short ones carved from dried foam, and two cardboard tube versions to pass out candy from a safe distance (more on those later). I wasn't set on eight tentacles -- it's the Kraken, not an octopus! -- but I was also running out of room in my house...
Next, I covered each in a layer of spray foam.
Step 4: Shaping the Body
Time to sculpt! I tried a variety of knives (and even a heated-wire foam-cutter, which just made a smelly mess -- it wasn't designed for this type of foam) but ultimately a very sharp paring knife from the kitchen was most effective.
I carved away the dried foam into the monster shape I'd envisioned, occasionally sketching onto the foam with a marker to make note of features and contours. The foam mostly came off in slices and chunks (though I wore a mask the whole time just in case), but it was still VERY messy. In the first picture above you can see a couple bags of foam chips, which I've saved for stuffing future builds. 644