Redrawing Our Relationship With Spiders

For many people, the feelings they have about spiders form a tangled web of repulsion, fear, and hate, but animator Joshua Slice has set out to shape a new perspective on these eight-legged wonders.

Using a jumping spider as his model, Slice created Lucas the spider, an animated Internet sensation. The adorable Lucas, voiced by Slices's five-year-old nephew, challenges arachnophobia by striking an engaging tone, which is exactly what the animator intended. To see Lucas and learn more about Slice's approach to creating him, watch the video below:



Lucas represents a smart blend of strategies from animation and environmental communication. First, Slice animated the spider so that it closely resembles a real jumping spider. It also moves like a real spider. The differences between art and life appear subtly. Although he has four large eyes like his counterpart in nature (real jumping spiders have a total of eight eyes but four large ones), Lucas possesses a more doe-eyed look. This gives him a less intimidating presence as does his young voice.

The changes Slice makes from real jumping spiders anthropomorphize Lucas only slightly, allowing people to connect with this eight-legged ambassador without making him so cartoonish that people can't associate him with actual spiders. As environmental communication scholar Julia Corbett argues, although anthropomorphizing contains drawbacks, when used strategically and minimally, it can help people better relate to animals and our environment. Early audience reactions suggest that Slice achieved that balance in an effective way.

With animation like Lucas, perhaps we'll untangled ourselves from our phobia of spiders and start to weave a better relationship with them.