My Papercraft TARDIS

Back in 2012 I was asked by IDW to design a papercraft TARDIS which would be featured as a retailer’s incentive cover for Doctor Who series 3 issue 1. This was a fun change of pace from my usual coloring work and a chance to challenge myself doing something completely out of my wheel house. I had seen several paper TARDISes over the years, going back to the one published in the Doctor Who Technical Manual in the 1980s, and I wanted mine to have the best elements of all of them but still fit on a comic book cover. This is what I came up with. Unlike a lot of paper TARDISes out there, including the recent one created for the Doctor Who World tour, I didn’t want mine to be flat. I wanted it to have a more recognizable silhouette.

Since IDW is no longer publishing Doctor Who and this issue is now hard to come by, I thought I would share it here. Here are the instructions:

1. Click on the image at the top of this post and save to your hard drive

2. Print (a heavier paper stock may have better results)

3. With a hobby knife and a metal ruler, carefully cut each slot and and cut out each piece

4. With a hobby knife and a metal ruler, lightly score along each fold line (the light blue lines)

5. Fold each piece along the fold lines

6. Insert each tab into the corresponding slot

7. Take your new Paper TARDIS on an adventure, photograph it, and send the photo to me via Facebook, Twitter or Instagram

Hint: When the original cover came out, I got a lot of comments about people being confused about the purpose of the “E” piece. I added that as a patch. Without using the “E” square while you assemble the base, there will be a square hole at the bottom where the white of the paper would show through. If you use the additional “E” square while you assemble the base, it will cover the hole so that the bottom of your TARDIS will be entirely blue. If you do this correctly, it will look like this:

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If you’re interested in having a closer experience to what you would have had if you bought the original Paper TARDIS cover, read the story it was published with. You can find the collected edition of The Hypothetical Gentleman in my eShop. Keep in mind, all of the Doctor Who books published by IDW are now out of print, so make sure you can grab these while supplies last.

Also, check out the other Doctor Who books from IDW that are still available.