Since Chapter 7 [and some of Chapter 8] of Zombieville centers on Isabel’s visit to Doctor Z, I decided a long time ago that I needed to make an exam room set. I started sometime last year with research. I had the opportunity to sit around in an actual exam room for about 45 minutes, waiting for a doctor, so I took the time to observe the layout and contents of the room. I sketched a diagram, which I then transferred into Photoshop.
I then considered my findings, my available set pieces, and the actual events I wanted to occur in the exam room in order to figure out what to make. My findings [i.e., my diagram] informed me that there was a lot of stuff in a typical U.S. doctor’s exam room, but I wondered if I really needed every single piece.
Of course I didn’t! All Isabel will be doing in the office is talking to either the doctor’s assistant or the doctor. No physical exam or special equipment needed, which means that I could dispense with the right half of the room. In fact, with the focus of Chapter 7 [and some of 8] on a conversation between Isabel and one other person, I realized that I really only needed the lower left corner of the exam room, from the wheeled stool down to the sink and over to a single visitor’s chair. If I constructed it right, this small area would imply an entire exam room, and I wouldn’t need any biological waste bins, autoclaves, scopes or exam tables.
Below is the doctor’s wall of the exam room, with details on construction. [I’m not showing Isabel’s chair, the bulletin board above it, and the art nearby — maybe in another post.]
The two wooden boxes fronted with grey cardstock and mounted on small wooden cubes form the core of this set. I favor generic set elements that I can use in many instances, and these boxes appear everywhere in my sets. They double [and triple and quadruple] as kitchen counters, work tables, office desks, and cashier’s counters.Sink: DripClips paper clip holder. Soap and other bottles: Rement.Hands-free paper towel dispenser is an empty dental floss container with a red tack driven into it for the sensor. Toilet paper glued on the bottom serves as paper towels. A scaled-down version of an actual public health poster from the CDC adds realism. Neodymium magnet holds up the unit, as well as anything else you see on the walls.Cabinets are two unfinished wooden boxes from the craft store, spray painted white and glued side to side, with pushpins for handles. They don’t open, but they don’t need to. They just need to suggest overhead cabinetry. Another CDC message distracts a little bit from the rough finish on the cabinet doors.Wall shelves made from the same wooden boxes as the cabinets. Supplies on top are made by taking product photos from the Web, creating box layouts with them in Photoshop, printing, cutting out, then taping up. This was a real tedious pain in the ass, so I soon switched to making little medical supplies and putting them in plastic containers that I bought to store custom mixed paints. On the second shelf, the cotton balls are made from actual cotton balls, and the large swabs at right are just the ends of full-scale cotton swabs. On the lowest shelf, the tongue depressors are made of a sheet of sandpaper folded and glued back to back, then cut into strips with rounded ends. Those small things on the right are supposed to be cotton swabs in true 1:6 scale, made out of cut-down toothpicks painted white, with little bits of cotton glued to one end. They came out badly.Tissue box and nitrile glove box are both based on Japanese novelty erasers that came packaged what looked like mini tissue boxes. Tissue is an actual tissue. Glove label is hand drawn. Glove is a small piece of an actual glove. In the center, another plastic paint container serves as storage for rolls of gauze [rolls of narrow strips of toilet paper]. Surprisingly enough, I did NOT make the stethoscope! :p
Doctor’s desk is a lid from a heavy-duty paper box from a craft store, tacked and hot glued to the side of the counter box.
