‘We’re so good we get you sued.’ How Myrtle Beach area shop builds horrors for theme parks

In the corner of Little Spider Creations, employee Gabe Brawner is playing the “Haunted Mansion” theme song on an organ.

The spookiness of the song combined with the hollow tone of organ music fills the warehouse.

The organ, which was picked up at an antique shop, along with the 10-foot-tall skeletons standing against the wall, a blood-red skeleton hanging from the rafters and an evil pumpkin sitting nearby, makes the space feel like a deconstructed haunted house — which fits Little Spider Creations vibe well.

“We mainly do large scale themeing,” said Gabe, owner Marc Brawner’s grandson. “We make haunted houses and stuff.”

Little Spider Creations focuses on building large-scale sculptures and creating Halloween-themed gear for various companies. Gabe said they have worked with Six Flags, Ripley’s and even Mr. Beast, a YouTube celebrity.

The company recently delivered designs for this year’s Six Flags’ Fright Fest.

Most of the sculpting is done on 16-foot blocks of compressed Styrofoam. The artists use horse brushes and small saws to carve into the blocks.

At the company’s Loris headquarters, a sculptor is projecting a spooky face onto a large piece of Styrofoam on a recent weekday in late September. He is tracing the lines where he will carve the face. A small pile of Styrofoam scraps from other projects sits in the background.

Little Spider Creations has been around since 1991, first starting in the Denver area and moving to Loris in 2016. Marc Brawner’s wife said she wanted to live near the beach, so they decided on the Myrtle Beach area.

Brawner was not at the Little Spider Creations shop on this September day, and when asked where he is, Gabe laughs and said he’s always up to something. That day it was 3-D printing at home.

“My mind never shuts off, in fact I’m on a lot of medicine trying to shut it off,” Marc said.

From molding latex to Styrofoam

Marc, the creative mastermind behind the family-run company, said he fell into the business in 1991. He worked in advertising until a latex mask company failed to pay Marc for his work. Marc decided to leave advertising and opened his own latex mask company — selling them for $6 each compared to his competitor’s $80 price tag.

“He didn’t like that,” Marc said.

While he started with masks, it slowly grew as people would ask for something larger. First someone asked for a prop, then an animatronic, then a haunted house and it kept going.

Marc’s latex mask business started suffering around 2010 so he pivoted to Styrofoam sculpting, which became more popular than the masks. He taught himself how to carve Styrofoam and added a coating to make it extremely durable.

“(Marc) used to, as a demonstration, take a sledgehammer and just go at the hard coat. It would just bounce right off,” Gabe said.

The lightweight yet strong Styrofoam creations gained enough attention that Marc got a call from a Six Flags in Maryland. He agreed to create a haunted house for $40,000 — an amount much smaller than Marc’s current $150,000 minimum. Marc said it was worth it to start working with the company.

From there, the company continued to grow. Little Spider Creations mainly keeps a Halloween focus but is willingly to adapt. They’ve partnered with golf courses and YouTubers.

Gabe said his dad, David Brawner, worked on Mr. Beast’s Willy Wonka set, painting the bridge and several of the murals. The video was posted two years ago and has over 317 million views.

‘We’re so good we get you sued’

One of the greatest things to happen to Little Spider Creations was when it lost out on a $20 million deal with Six Flags, Marc said.

Little Spider Creations was lined up to get the contract and create sculptures for six parks but then the company pivoted and decided to hire someone else.

In the end, the other company “dropped the ball so hard” that Six Flags and Cedar Fair CEOs called Marc up. Since then, he’s had a great relationship with the theme park giants.

Little Spider Creations has not been without controversy in their creative endeavors over the years. Marc said the company made sculptures for a Harry Potter themed AirBnb in Orlando, Florida, that later faced legal trouble.

Before signing the contract, Marc warned the woman that they were working with copyrighted materials and she could potentially be sued, which is exactly what happened. Famed “Harry Potter” author J.K Rowling sued the AirBnb’s owner, specifically because the sculptures looked too much like the movies, Marc said.

“We came up with a catchphrase, ‘We’re so good we get you sued,’” Marc said with a laugh.

A business handed through the generations

As Gabe showed off the warehouse spaces and explained Little Spider Creations, he spoke affectionately of his “papa,” Marc. When asked how long he’s worked at the company, he said, “technically my whole life.”

“I sat at my papa’s desk while he was coming up with designs or talking to clients,” Gabe said.

Marc’s grandson does a little bit of everything in the shop but mainly helps keep everything running. He’s followed after his dad and two uncles, who also joined Marc in Little Spider Creations. Tony, David and Jordan Brawner all run different aspects of the company.

When it comes to finding employees, hiring family friends has worked well for them. Gabe said they’ve tried recruiting from art schools with little success, and when they’ve hired artists, they often don’t last long.

Instead, employees like Joey Russell, who has been there for almost two years, start off as friends.

“Tony called me one day; I was in between work and he’s like, ‘You want to come work for a week and help me clean out the shop?’” Russell said. “I just never left.”

Multiple employees said their favorite projects are when they get more creative control. Marc and employee Nathan Escobar said they loved designing and building haunted house themed restaurants.

“When it comes to creativity,” Marc said, “it comes easy to me.”