Cloning Chamber Tutorial
For Lamaclown's
first Trash-to-Treasure Custom Terrain contest, I created a Cloning Chamber. The rules of the contest required that the object be constructed primarily of egg cartons and straws.
After some brainstorming and a few sketches of the best ideas, I settled upon the Cloning Chamber. The most difficult component to find was the clear plastic cylinders for the chambers. I finally found these at Michael's Craft Store. They were in an aisle with essential oils and stuff for aromatherapy. A travel kit might also have similar cylinders for shampoo.
I cut off the top and bottom of the cylinders to the length I needed.
Cutting the egg carton to size.
One big and one small for the base of each of the three cloning chambers.
Test fit.
Glue with white glue.
In the background you can see what will become the upper portion of the chambers. It was cut from the upper half of the egg carton. I had be very careful with this piece to keep the segments from tearing apart.
Using Grishnakh's
Hex Template 4 to cut the base out of cross stitch mesh.
Test fit of the cloning chamber bases on the cross stitch mesh.
For the top, make a hole in the top of each chamber. Glue a bendy straw into each hole with hot glue. At the intersection of the middle straw into the upper straw, I cut an arc shape in the middle straw such that it would mate with the upper straw. Glue with hot glue.
Base coat in black, then drybrush with dark gray, light gray and silver.
The figure I used is Man-Thing from Heroclix. The arm on the left sticks out too far to fit in the cylinder. I tried repositioning the arm using hot water baths. It worked, but the arm kept moving back to its original position over a day or so.
So I ended up cutting off the arm at the shoulder, slicing off a wedge of the arm, then gluing it back on with crazy glue. This was much easier than I thought it would be and looked good too.
Adding details. The numbers on the upper portion and the lights and buttons on the bases are painted on, then outlined with a Sharpie marker. The ladder and the railing are from the Heroclix figure "Black Mask." The blue and red pipe at the base are speaker wire painted red and blue. The collar on the floor for the straw to go into (behind the railing) is made from a leftover rubber seal from a toilet repair kit. Hot glue works well to attach these details.
And the final product again. The final assembly was tricky. I first glued the figures in place with hot glue. Next I glued the tubes in place with hot glue. You have to be careful to avoid getting glue any on the figures. Also, you have to work fast to put a nice bead all the way around the base and get the tube in place before the glue gets too cool. And, the tube has to be straight up and down so that it aligns with the top. Finally, I put three beads of hot glue on the upper piece (now you have to move really fast) and put it down over the cylinders.
I hope you have found this tutorial to be helpful.