Goodwood Racing Company UFO Spaceship

UFO Spaceship

The brief

Goodwood asked if we could design and make a spaceship prop that had crashed in their grounds for the 2022 Goodwood Festival Revival. We decided to design our very own classic UFO spaceship with lights, smoke and eerie alien sounds. We aren't sure if this can be classed as a giant prop as it was probably slightly less than the 'real' thing at a mere 8 metres diameter, but it certainly felt giant working on it.

Project Details

Spur creative were fantastic to work with, extremely accommodating to our requests and helped turn our vision into a reality. The team at Spur put all their effort and time into make us a UFO to our unique specifications. We  massively appreciate the work they did for us on a tight timescale and would highly recommend to anyone.

Amy Allen - Event Planner - Goodwood

Prop process images

  1. A spaceship we made for Goodwood Festival of Speed.
  2. A mould of section of spaceship we made for Goodwood
  3. Cast fibreglass sections of spaceship for a prop we made for Goodwood Festival of Speed.
  4. Sanding the surface of our spaceship prop ready to be painted.
  5. Our painter up on a cherry picker to reach the top of the spaceship prop she is painting.
  6. Putting the fibreglass sections together of a spaceship prop we made for Goodwood Festival of Speed.
  7. A fibreglass spaceship prop lit up with a smoke machine and sound at Goodwood Festival of Speed.
  8. A spaceship prop we made that looks like it has crashed into the ground.

The Process

 

This was a very large prop at 8 metres diameter and we had to work out the best way of making it so that it could be transported and stored after the Revival Festival had ended. We designed the spaceship so were able to split it into sections at the design stage that we knew would go together with limited joins. Each of the sections were the exact shape which made our life easier. We made the master section with MDF and then moulded and cast in fibreglass. We made a metal frame which we bonded into each section. These sections were then bolted together to form the half UFO (as the other half wasn't needed as it had to look as though it was crashed into the ground) 

We programmed the lights so that they would flash in a sequence around the edge of the spaceship and we used super bright LED's so that the lights could be seen during the day. We used a smoke machine for the smoke coming from the crashed spaceship and made an audio loop of eerie alien sounds. The entire spaceship was sprayed silver with some scorch marks for added effect, and we made polystyrene rubble to finish off the crashed effect; these were painted the same colour as the surrounding ground and were dressed to look like the broken ground around the crash.

Project Image

A crashed spaceship build made for Goodwood Festival of Speed.

The Result

The crashed spaceship looked amazing and everyone at Goodwood loved it. This was quite a task, having lots to think about to make this work well and for the install to be seamless, but we did it, and thoroughly enjoyed making it.