How To Make One of Tearaway's Papercraft Models

Media Molecule's Tearaway is one of the year's best games, and it's also got the year's coolest unlockables: real life papercraft models that you can print out and make in real life. Though I'm not particularly crafty, I decided to give it a go.

As you play Tearaway, you'll unlock papercraft models of the odd creatures you meet and photograph in the game. Once you've unlocked them, you can link your PSN account to the official Tearaway site, and upload all the papercraft plans you've acquired to the site. From there, you can download and print off the directions and models, with the option of having them colored in for you (which I selected) or as blanks that you can color to your liking.

The process was really quick and easy. I chose to download a Wendigo papercraft plan, which is a beginner-level difficulty model. You can toggle on or off options like print lines, outlines, and written directions. There's also a picture (above) that shows what it's supposed to look like. I took pictures of my project at each step, so let's see how well I did.

Here's the original PDF printout. As you can see, all the parts are outlined and there's also a large picture to act as your guide. Pretty straightforward stuff.

The first step is to cut out all the pieces. It's not hard to do, but you have to be pretty exact, which takes some concentration if you're not a pro at this sort of thing.

Next, you make your folds. Some of these done to fold back tabs that will be glued. Others are more cosmetic, done to give the model a three-dimensional look and some depth.

Now it's time to start assembling the model. Some parts will have tabs that need to be glued together, like the two halves of the face seen above, or the eyes, which set above the main body on some tabs to make them pop out a bit. I actually couldn't find any glue around the office, so I used little loops of Scotch tape. It worked well enough in a pinch, but I think glue would definitely give you a more stable construction and more polished look.

Here's the finished product! Not bad for my first time if I do say so myself. Again, this was an easy one; some of the models look like they'd take some real skill and quite a bit of time. As I said above, I wish I had some glue. It would also be preferable to print the model out on stiffer, thicker paper stock – all I had was conventional office paper which is pretty thin.

Overall, this was a lot of fun, and I'm glad Tearaway pushed me to do something I would have never tried otherwise. It's nice touch that Media Molecule added this to the game experience.