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...
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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