Many aspire to Blu-Tack® greatness, but artist Liz Thompson is already there. Question is, can you do better?
Liz made us this humongous spider (spiderus biggus, but we call him Bluey) for a display at London Zoo to show off what a great medium Blu-Tack® is for modelling anything you can imagine. You know, like we keep saying.
Scientifically we can compare the growth of spiderus biggus with that of a lesser creature, the red-kneed spider (also pictured — that tiny, almost invisibly small spider, with, er, red knees). It can clearly be seen that the growth potential of spiderus biggus is far greater. Thus, if you wish to create an army of marauding killer spiders, Blu-Tack® is obviously the better choice.
Anyway, to business. We have shedloads of great MP3 players to give away to mark the launch of the great Spider-Man 3 DVD and if you want the chance to win one, have a shot at modelling a spider, Spider-Man or anything you fancy in a spidery vein. Just take a photo of the result and email it to us. You can see the details on our special Spider-Man pages. (link)
Bluey, for those who enjoy statistics, is about a mile across. Well all right, about four feet across, and weighs 200kg — about as much as three big chaps with boots on. If you fancy making one we’ll be glad to sell you 4,000 packets of Blu-Tack®, because that’s how much he took.
Bluey will be on display at the zoo all through November if you are in the vicinity, and if not, you can view him here indefinitely.
By the way, entries for our Spider-Man 3 MP3 competition that are grabs of Bluey slightly altered in Photoshop and claimed as your own won’t get anywhere. Cheek.
Blu-Tack® is tough but it can’t support this sort of weight - about 200kgs or the weight of three men. So Liz began by welding up a superstructure from steel wire to form the legs and a body section.
After building the steel structure, Liz covered it in a wrap of Blu-Tack® (made by running the material through a pasta maker!) to start the process of building the final shape
Eventually the final shape was set, with the joints and sections of the spider body in finished form...
...But then came the dressing, the art of turning a basic shape into a lifelike, detailed spider. Liz spent days adding the spider’s tiny body hairs and other details.
You wouldn’t like to come face to face with this chap on a dark night, would you? The finished spider turns Blu-Tack® into something rather scary!
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