The Horse The Horse snarls at its victims with a ferocious attitude. He is a LARGE and time-consuming prop, but every horseman needs his steed. Click Here for the Horseman Instructions

The first thing you need to build a prop is some sort of frame. PVC is a good material to use to build the horse. Its best to build the sections one at a time to avoid confusion as to what goes where. The picture below should make building the frame a snap. Just measure the length you need with a tape measure, mark it, and then cut it with a hacksaw. A pair of 90°s makes the front for the horse's head and the legs are attached with 90°s at the ends. I decided to make the legs detachable so I can store the horse easier.

Blue segments are 6", Purple is 8", Green is 12", and Red is 14"

Recommended Substitution:

Instead of making this big mess you can wrap the entire torso in duct tape. Then you can decide if you want ribs on your horse or not. If you choose to add them you can then glue them on and add fur. I recommend against creepcasting this project as it is heavy and will be hidden anyway.
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OR, Continue with the following

The next parts to build are the horse's ribs. For this I chose to use sprayfoam because I could make them as wide and long as I needed. I took my tape measure and measured around the torso, it was a little over 60" so I chose to make my ribs between 58" and 66" long. Lay out a sheet of plastic (plastic bags won't work well) and mark off the width and length of each rib by painting white marks on the plastic. After that spray your bones until you are out of foam. You should lay down your strips about 1" wide. Let them sit overnight then pull them apart from the plastic and let them set overnight again. The part that attaches to the plastic won't expand as much as the parts that are exposed to the air, so by pulling it apart and letting it sit longer the bottom sides will expand and cause the ribs to bend naturally. That is pretty handy.

Step 3:

Now you should have a set of 4-8 ribs to use on the horse that bend naturally. Pick your 4 favorite ribs of different sizes and place them over the back of the frame with the longest ribs in the middle. Take strips of wire about 8" long and wire your ribs to the frame. Attach the ribs at all four corners to keep the ribs from changing shape and moving. After that take some duct tape and tape the wire to the PVC to keep the bone from straying from it position, this is pretty important. Now take a short sprayfoam rib and tear it in half, attach both pieces to the front of the horse and trim them up to fit with the hacksaw.

Next what we want to do is cut out Foamboard for the horses head and neck. After constructing the head I would advise cutting the neck and head out as one piece, which will eliminate the problems I had later. You should leave yourself plenty of room between the PVC frame and the edges of the Foamboard. I think I cut the head section 18"x12" and the neck I cut to fit, but I think the measurements were also 18"x12". As you can see in the first picture I cut out a section to slide my PVC through, but I would advise just cutting a hole and reassembling the PVC. Now take another sheet of foam board and cut it the same size as the head and neck. Take your tape measure and square and carefully draw where you need to carve channels in the foam for the PVC to fit. You should also draw where the PVC is at on the outer pieces as a reference, and as a reminder not to cut down more than 1/2" in that spot. Picture two shows what I mean better than I can explain it. If you look at the piece that's flipped up you see lots of little rectangular cuts. The new technique I use for cutting channels is to set my Dremel tool to the depth I need (for this I need 1") and cut out my outline. Then I go back and forth cutting 3/4" rectangles throughout my channel. When I'm done with that I just break them all off, it comes out cleaner and it is a lot faster.

Now we need to glue all the pieces together. The best way to do this is to take The small wood file and 'rough' up the surface, giving the glue a better surface to hold. By scraping it back and forth the glue will have a better surface to stick to. After scraping all inner surfaces sweep the dust off with the hand broom and get the glue and caulking gun ready. Squirt some glue out in strips and spread it around with the Plastic card or old comb. Don't put too much glue on, but a nice even coat will stick well. Pictures three and four will demonstrate what I mean.

Now all we have left to do for this step is to stick all the pieces together, lay a flay board over the top and place heavy buckets on it. Let the pieces glue for at least 24 hours.

Now this is the artsie-fartsie sculpting part of the horse. First we need to get a basic head shape for the horse. Get some graphing paper and draw a scaled image of the PVC pipe and foam head. Draw a basic, simplified outline of a horse's head on the paper, one that will be easy to measure and cut. Now draw that on your foam head and cut out the basic out line like in the picture below.

After that take your handy-dandy file, level out all the edges, and let the head set overnight to let the glue seal the new outer edges. If you don't wait your pieces might slide around and mess up your work. After it sets overnight find the spot where the eye should go and sketch a simple eye. Take your square and draw a 1" line from the tip of the snout and up to eye, like in picture 2 above. (I didn't draw an eye, just follow the line) Trace that line around the top of the head; draw another 1" line to the snout. Now cut that out in chunks, like in the picture below.

(NOTE: You might want to cut your eye out first, this is just your preference)

The picture above shows the eye area after being carved our with the Dremel tool, it was shaped using the cone-like stone bit. I also cut out another area in front of the eye to make my evil eyebrow stand out more. Now more sculpting! Cut out the 1" areas around the bottom of the head and round it out and smooth it down with the file. The picture below shows the horse finely sanded with the foam sandpaper block, but this is not needed (I found out later) and the neck has been filed down about 1/2" to make the jaw stand out more. This isn't hard, it just takes some time and lots of sweeping with the hand broom. If you want to add lights to the eyes, this is the time to do that. Carefully poke a hole from the back of the head to the eye, then work a rattail file through the hole (by spinning) and slowly bore out a hole big enough for you light bulb.

Making the legs shouldn't be hard with all the skills you have obtained. First figure out the dimensions you want your legs to have. I would recommend making them a little larger than you would expect, because I made on of mine too small (oops!). So small in fact that it looked comical. First you should take your PVC leg, trace the outline of it onto paper, and cut it out. Use this outline to sketch where your PVC will fit and how big the leg needs to be. Cut out a rectangle from your foam at least 4" larger in every direction that the model, then trace the outline on it. After that Dremel out the area where the PVC will fit, the depth should be 5/8". Also, make sure to cut a hole out where the 90-degree elbow has to sick out. Cut out another rectangular piece the same size as the other, flip the pattern over, trace it and Dremel that out too. After you are done with that place the PVC between the pieces and make sure that it fits inside without rattling around too much. Now take one of the sheets and draw a basic outline for the shape of the leg, be sure to give yourself plenty of room like in the picture below. Cut out the shape, trace it on the other sheet, and cut that one out. Like the other Styrofoam sheets 'ruff' up the insides where the glue will go, glue it, weight it, and let it set for 24 hours. After that, make the other.

After the glue has dried take your pen and free hand the leg outline. I have included a picture below to help with this process. After that take your hacksaw and cut out the outline 'VERTICALLY' not diagonal like the picture shows (oops!), after that then go along the outline diagonally <whew!>. After that grab your file and sculpt away! Round off all the corners and use the foam sandpaper to give the hooves a nice smooth feel.

Ready to attach your fur?....Almost. First we need to prep the head, legs, and body for it. If you haven't already done so carve out the nostrils and mouth. The areas of the nostrils, eyes, mouth, and hooves all need to be sanded up nice and smooth, then painted with black and red acrylic paints. One coat will do, but two does look better. If you paint inside the eyes red, and have a red light shining behind it the eye will tend to glow, instead of just looking like it is lit up with a red light. To tint my krypton bulbs I got a sample from my gel book (gels are what is used for colored lighting in the theater). Don't worry about getting this, I'm sure red cellophane will work just as well doubled over. To put the gel in I guesstimated the width of the hole and cut a narrow slit in front of the bulb with and exacto knife. After I made the slit wide enough the filter slipped right into the hole and I trimmed off the extra part that was sticking out. After that I was ready to attach my material.

First I started with a tape measure and measured the distance along the head from the horse's mouth to beyond the bottom of the neck. I wanted the fabric to come off from the neck and down to the bottom of the horse so I could fit it flush with the legs and fake ribs in front of the horse. My material was 48" long so I cut a strip off that was 2' wide. I took my liquid nails and zigzagged a thin strip down the horse's neck, matched my material to the bottom lip, and worked it on the horse. Where I had to go around corners I cut the fabric so it would lay flat across the sides of the face (the picture will probably convey this better). I held it in place in certain spots (like along the lips) with stickpins. After that I cut a 1'x1' section from the material and started cutting triangles out of it to fill in gaps and cover other areas. Keep doing this patchwork until you have done the sides and the top of the head. It is easiest to glue around the edges of the material before attaching it to the head.

It was at this point that I realized that I needed ears, so I did a couple quick drawings on some foam, cut it out, and sculpted away with my Dremel tool. I painted the insides black and attached material to the outside. Putting fur on the legs is similar so I don't think I need to describe that..

The body is a little more challenging though. It will take lots of stickpins, material, and patience. You could cover the whole back, and skip the corpsing look, but I think it looks neat. I cut a 3' wide section from the material and cut out a big irregular hole from the middle and a few satellite holes for the corpse to show through. I threw the material over the horses back to see how it would fit up and made a few changes to the material. After that take the glue and squirt strips where the material will attach to, don't worry about being perfect. Put the material on the horse and stick pin it into the position you want it in. One of the things I overlook was adding wrinkles to the fur; I think that might add some interesting texture. Now let it dry overnight....

I had trouble coming up with a good idea for a mane because I had lots of so-so ideas, and none of them had the 'look' that I wanted. I finally made up my mind while walking through Wal-Mart, I saw a cheap $3.50 broom. What I liked about it was that it was black, plastic, and all the strands were clumped into groups, making it easier to cannibalize. What I did was take my hot glue pot and fill it with some glue, got some scissors, and cut out a strip of fur long enough to go from between the ears and down to the bottom of the neck. Then I took my scissors, grabbed a hold of one group of strands, cut them off, dipped the bottoms in the hot glue, let them cool for a few seconds then set them down and went onto the next. This was really repetitive, but it got the job done. When I finished I had 98 groups to make a mane out of. Then I took and taped a strip of duct tape to the back of the fur and began to mark dots where I wanted to put holes for the hairs to stick through. I staggered them along the entire length of the fir 'wig'.

After that I poked out all the holes with an all. I counted the holes and found that I had a lot of extra groups, so I punched extra hole where I thought the mane would be too thin. After doing that I took all the groups of hairs and threaded them into the holes. After I finished that I put more duct tape on the backside to hold all the hairs vertical. All that was left to do was attach the mane with stickpin (so I could take it off later) and fan out all the hairs. All in all, not hard, but time consuming.

All that's left to do is to add the finishing touches. I would suggest covering the horse with an even layer of spider webs. I say this because the holes where the corpsing meets the fur are well defined and don't look quite right. By adding a layer of spider webbing it should tie in all the areas and hide other flaws. Also you can add some reigns, saddle, and other things that you devious mind can come up with...

The Completed Horse

Click Here for the Full Hi-Res Picture
(1024x768)

Other Ideas:
Here are some ideas I thought about doing to my horse, but didn't have the time or materials:

• Fog from the horse's nostrils- not hard to do, just plug off the holes to the legs, drill holes down through the nostrils into the PVC, the hook up your fog machine to pipe it through :)
  
• Lengthen the torso and add a back end to horse and have a free stranding horse to
  mount your horseman to. I have considered doing this later because it's a
  pain in the butt to mount it to the tree. Wouldn't that be cool to have a rearing
  horse in the middle of your yard?