12.31.2011

Silver Towers of Tzeentch, Pt. II

Okay, last week I built the flying island base.  Now for the towers themselves.

Looking at the classic model, there are three main towers—the tallest, most prominent ones—and two shorter ones in the front.  I’m going to stick to this basic design, although I’m going to tweak the style a bit.

Because that central tower is so big, I’m going to put it together a bit differently than I’ve made cylinders in the past. I built it in two halves so I’d be able to make it from my existing cardstock (big cereal boxes).  One piece was 6” x 11” and the other was 7 1/4” x 11” tall.  Then I made a series of scores on each one 1 1/4” apart, parallel to the short side.  This gave me one piece with four sides and one with five.  Each one should also have an extra inch to be the gluing-tab.  I marked the tab with a couple X’s so it’s easy to keep straight.

And, yes, these towers are going to have nine sides each.  It’s important.  Really.

This is Important—Make sure the tab is on the same side for both pieces.  It can be to the right or the left, but they both have to be on the same side or the tower won’t go together correctly.

Now, I drew a line across the card 2 1/2” inches from the top.  Then I went through each section and drew two lines so I had a row of triangles.  On this scale they’re going to need some bite, so I also put a small tab on each one.

Once that was done I scored that original cross-line and all the lines for the long sides. This was also when I trimmed the corners on the tab—it’s going to be an inch shorter so it’s beneath the triangles. Then I connected the two sections.  Because it was so big, I put clothespins on each end and used my fingers to keep it pressed flat in the middle.  The tab itself is pretty wide, so I made sure the inside and outside edges were flat.  Once this was one big piece I could work with it just like any of the others.  Speaking of which...

Helpful Hint – Before cutting out any triangles or assembling the towers, I drew two or three horizontal lines across each card.  Once they’re assembled, this will give me a good level-line to use for fire points, banners, and other details.

The other cylinders I could build in my usual manner.  I made four more, and on each one I varied the height of that cross-line to give me a few different looks for the towers.  I ended up doing three towers with 1” sides.  One was 9” tall with a 2” section for the top.  The next one was 8” tall with a 2” top.  The last one was only 6” tall and had a 1 3/4” top. The final tower had 7/8” sides.  I made it 6” tall with a 1 1/2” top section.  This shouldn’t be much of a spike, but almost flat, kind of like the vats on the Plaguereaper.

I glued each tab so the cylinders were complete.  It’s a little tricky working around the triangles at the top, but not that difficult.  I used a pencil to push on the seam for the smaller towers.  The short ones I could reach a finger in, and the central tower’s large enough to put my whole hand in.  Because they're so large, I triple-checked that everything was lining up right.  On this scale, a crooked line could make a real mess.

Once the cylinders were dry, I started working on the tower-tops.  After building the vats on the Plaguereaper, I’ve found it’s best to join two triangles together, let them dry, then add the third, let it dry, and so on.  Because I’ve got five towers, I can clamp one, move on to the next, and by the time they’re all done I can start moving forward again on the first one.  This also helped to even out the cylinder-tower and make it even all the way around.

Helpful Hint – When you start doing the tower tops, make sure all the corners are sharp and the scores do all the way from edge to edge.  If they don’t, there will be odd gaps and wrinkles where the folds don’t sit right.

I finished up by dropping a bead of glue down into the tip and moving it around with gravity.  This gave me a solid point.  Although I’m debating if these points are tall enough, going off the original model.  I may decide to cap them.

While the towers were drying, I cut a few long strips of cardstock.  I did three at 1 1/2” wide, ten at 1”, and five at 3/4” wide.  I wrapped each of these around a spraypaint can to give them a good curve.  These are going to be detail at the top and bottom of each tower.

But that’s for next time.  Or, to be more exact, next year.

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