Spider Society - LEGO MOC

The previous Lego LUG meeting (as described here) set this past month's build themes as Spider-Man and monster. As before, I decided to combine the two themes in one post: inspired by the Werewolf Spider-Man in the recent CMF line, and the "multiple Spideys" meme, I came up with a little storyline.

Werewolf Spider-Man is truly a monster, playing slow jazz on his Spidey Sax right in the middle of the Spider Society. How rude! And it's drawing the attention (and in some cases, ire) of some of his compatriots.

 As usual, I started with a few basic ideas, roughly sketched out on a Post-it note and Starbucks napkin:

I wanted to replicate the angled pillars seen in the Spider Society (as shown in the Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse movie) as well as Spider-People's penchant for walking along the undersides and walls of structures. I also wanted to include hexagons like the inter-dimensional portals they used, which is indeed a difficult shape to create with Lego.

To begin, I did some studies. I'll be the first to admit that math is hard, and while there are ways to calculate how many studs and plates it would take to build an angle, it's easier (and more fun) for me to work with my hands and test things out. In the process of making the columns—I knew I'd use hinge blocks at the top and bottom, with 1x2 slopes to keep them in the correct position—I found that no matter how I combined 1x2 and 2x2 bricks, they were still rather fragile, so one limitation was including Technic bricks so I could use a 16-stud Technic brick to lock it in place, and provide another surface on which to anchor Spider-People.

Using that as a minimum length for the diagonal beams, I added bricks and plates until it seemed it matched a vertical column, as shown above. The column is 12 bricks + 1 plate high, and the diagonal column is 12 bricks + 2 plates + 2 hinge bricks tall.

That said, combining multiple columns, vertical and diagonal, revealed that there's a slight difference in height, so I ended up anchoring the diagonal beams only at the bottom, with tiles on top so they only appear to be tied to the roof plate.

Because I ended up using most of my 1x2 and 2x2 light bluish-grey bricks for the diagonal columns, I wouldn't have enough to build the vertical ones. Luckily my local Lego Store's Pick-A-Brick wall had lots of light grey 3x3x6 45 degree walls (part 87421) as well as dark grey 2x4 pentagonal tiles. That said, I needed to figure out how to work with those wall pieces: that little finger of plastic at the top really makes for some awkward connections, and only 1x1 bricks would serve to connect one to another in a stack. I also noticed that a 2x2 plate with 45 corner cut fit between the wall's top anchor points:

While I used a "fakego" plate from the Dollar Tree for the base, I needed to compose the roof from actual Lego plates (including purchasing several 6x16 light grey plates from my local Bricks & Minifigs shop). The composite nature also meant that I could include gaps to light the scene below, and this then suggested including a Tron-esque dissolve effect at the leading edge (using 1x1 pieces as well as the 3x4 plates that came with the Spider-Man CMF figures, all in bright-trans orange) to further highlight and accentuate the Werewolf:

As you can see, I further accentuated him by giving him a podium on which to perform. I found a tutorial online (via Pinterest, the original source seems to be Reddit) for building one out of 6 2x4 plates, 4 1x2 plates, 8 1x2 Technic bricks, and 2 1x1 SNOT bricks with studs on all four sides. The SNOT bricks grip the pins in the Technic bricks' undersides, and 2 1x2 plates take up as much width as a 1x1 snot brick, allowing layering and rotating so that each of the 2x4 plates are anchored to the central build. Having a Technic brick at the bottom meant I could anchor this to the base with a 2x2 tile with a Technid pin, using the pentagonal tiles (as well as two 1x1 pyramids) to anchor it in place. The 4x4 circle plate on which he stands simply attaches to the SNOT brick at the top. It's a fragile build, but including tiles and slopes on both the floor and side pieces helped support it.

Throughout the space I included all of the Spider-Person minifigs I had in my collection, including several from the 2024 Advent Calendar and all of the ones I'd kept from the Spider-Man CMF series.

As I placed them, I tried to create little scenes of the Spider-People going about their day, but being interrupted by the Spidey-Sax's sweet strains:

 Finally, I added a backplate on which I created a few hexagonal portals (alas, in bright light orange, since I didn't have sufficient appropriate pieces in trans-bright orange); I also have sprinkled a few miniature Spider-People in 1x1 bricks through the build, inspired by the ones I put in the portals on the backplate, as though they were in the process of arriving or leaving through them. To attach the plate, I used 1x2 and 2x2 jumper plates to hold (lightly, but not let go) onto the 2x2 "T-plates" and 1x2 transparent bricks without center pins.

 And finally, a turnaround of the completed build: