Instructables' Official Papercraft Robot!

Congratulations! You have decided to enter the fabulous world of Official Instructables Robot Papercrafting. With just a few supplies you (hopefully) have around the house, you can construct a desk buddy, a guardian of your television remote, or a dashboard ornament.

Even if you don't have any experience with paper projects, we think you'll have fun putting this together. This model was inspired by this Instructable (we updated the graphics using official Robot images).

Step 1: What You'll Need

You can download the papercraft sheet at the end of this step.

While you could print it out on regular printer paper, if possible, this instructable works best with the robot printed on thicker paper or cardstock.

As far as tools go, you will need the following:

Scissors. To cut with!

Glue. Unfortunately, one of paper's inherent qualities is that it doesn't stick to everything that touches it. We'll use the wonder of glue to hold the pieces together.

A pencil (optional, but very handy to have). To mark the paper and press glued parts together.

Step 2: Cut Out the Pieces

Cut the pieces from the sheet. Cutting the individual robot parts first makes things easier, but isn't required.

You'll notice the dashed line along the edges. You should try to cut on the actual dashed line; the color that bleeds over the edge is just in case your cuts aren't perfect, there isn't a plain ol' white edge.

Step 3: The Body

We'll start with the body, since every other part of the robot will be connecting to it.

To make the folds on the tabs and for each of the faces of the body, it's easiest to mark and score where all of the folds will be. Flip it over so the colored side is face down. Wherever there's a tab, draw a light line connecting the two points at the ends where the tab meets the main body (the folding tabs are a slightly different color than the robot body). This line is simply a guide for you to score where the fold will be. Then, run your scissors very lightly over the line. You'll find that this makes the tabs easier to fold and 'stick' to their desired positions better.

After you've scored the folds, just go ahead and fold! You won't want to fold each section completely so they meet, but just enough to resemble the shape that the body will eventually be.

With the body folded in place (see image), dab a little glue/run your glue stick on the tab. Then, fold them over and affix each tab to the adjacent section. The end result should resemble a box shape.

Step 4: Getting Ahead

Mark and score the head just like you did for the body and glue the tabs together. You've done it once with the body already; the head is just more of the same!

Step 5: Flexing the Arms

The arms are pretty simple: just mark and score the tabs like you did with the body and head, and fold the tabs as shown.

Step 6: Is It Leg Day? It Is.

The legs! Quite literally, your papercraft robot won't stand without them.

The legs, like the arms, are simple but require a little bit of finesse. Put a little bit of glue on the side tab of the leg and form a cylinder. If you're having trouble pressing the tab to the interior of the cylinder, you can use a pencil to apply pressure until the glue has dried.

Step 7: Putting It All Together

At this point, each of the individual appendages and head should be complete and you should be ready to put it all together. The head and arms are pretty simple. You can have the head looking in whatever direction you'd like and a bit of glue should do the trick. For the arms, just fold the tab and stick it to the side of the body with some glue.

The leg placement is the important part. If they're too far forward or towards the back of the body, it won't balance and your robot won't stand on its own. Who wants a robot that needs to lean on a pencil holder or computer monitor?! On the bottom of the body you'll see two darker circles. That's generally where the legs should go. If you're having trouble getting the robot to stand, if you attach them at a very slight stagger (as seen in the picture above), that should help.

And there you have it! Your very own papercraft Instructables robot!

We'd love to see your creations on social media so if you post it on Instagram, Twitter, or wherever, be sure to tag it #instructablesrobot - we might even retweet/re-gram (is that a word?) it!