More Awesome on the Inside

Due to the application of transdimensional engineering, whilst the exterior of every Tardis in use by the Time Lords is relatively small and unassuming, taking the form of such things as stone columns, grandfather clocks, horseboxes or even antiquated Police boxes, the interior is much, much bigger.

In other words, it’s bigger on the inside, which was the title of my previous post.

In that post, I did state that it was my intention to build the control room for my 13th Doctor – with a combination of downloaded papercraft templates (which I tinkered with) and some odds and ends from my bits box.

I was also intending to make some progress on my entries for Monster May(hem), the month-long event instigated by Keith over at Dead Dick’s Tavern & Temporary Lodging, but because of certain issues regarding the building of my control room, these were put on hold.

However, I believe that concentrating on my Tardis was worth it, but you can judge that for yourself.

So, having downloaded the template for the 8th Doctor’s Tardis floor, resized it and printed out enough copies to produce the entire hexagonal wooden floor, I cut these out, as well as a piece of mounting board. The idea was to glue the three parts of the floor to the mounting board with a glue-stick, then use a plate to make the completed ‘floor’ circular.

Things did not go according to plan.

To cut a long story short, I messed this part up and had to come up with an alternative plan – which actually worked out better, as you will see.

Using a side plate, I cut a circle of mounting board approximately 8 inches in diameter, used a compass to find the centre, then scribed 5 rings within the circle. I then divided this into 16 segments.

It would have been easier if I’d had a black Sharpie for the next part, but the whole circle was then painted alternating black and white, to create a tiled floor, like so;

As you can probably appreciate, this took quite some time, as I initially painted the black tiles, then realised that I had to tidy of the edges of the white tiles with some white paint, then go back and do some touching up with BOTH black and white paints when the original coats were dry. Labour intensive, but does give a good effect, even if staring at it for any length of time does start fucking with your eyes.

In order to protect my hard work and give it a more ’tile-y’ look, the floor was then covered with some transparent sticky-backed plastic, like so;

You can just about make out the sheen on the top left of the floor in the above picture and the 13th Doctor standing in the centre does give a sense of scale.

The final part of preparing the floor was to make a hole in the exact centre, like so, for reasons that will be explained later;

Now that the floor was done, it was time to start working on the ‘fixtures and fittings’.

First was the Tardis console. The transparent pen lid used as the time rotor had been glued into the hole on the HeroClix base, but was loose AND wonky, so this was re-glued with my son’s hot glue gun, rather than with what I’d attempted to use previously.

I’d also worked out that the cardstock console panel would need some kind of support, so some careful measuring was done and a rubber sleeve, which was the finger-grip from another pen, was cut down and slid over the central column. The base had previously been given a coat of Docrafts Bronze, as shown below;

After this picture was taken, the base received a further coat of Bronze, as did the sleeve.

Next up was the additional furniture – two file card cabinets taken from the Victory of the Daleks papercraft set and a grandfather clock taken from the Sarah Jane Adventures Bannerman Road set, all downloaded from the AFT Downloads site.

The end of yet another expired pen became a stone planter (once repainted), and a blob of hot glue secured the small frond of plastic vegetation, creating EITHER a pot plant for the interior of the Tardis control room or the Great Rangdo of Arg – in his Aspidistra form…

The next part was to assemble the walls. I’d printed out on card wall sections from the 4th Doctor’s secondary control room, including the scanner, but not the stained-glass windows – because I didn’t like them. These had been manipulated to produce a run of roundel wall sections, with blank wall sections in between. I’d made a double-sized blank section, which I then pasted in the exterior door section from the 9th Doctor’s Tardis, to provide an egress.

The two printed sections were cut out, with a half-inch white border at the bottom, to create tabs with which to attach the walls to the floor. This was then joined in the centre and the whole interior wall covered with plastic to protect it and give the slightly lacquered appearance of the original walls. This didn’t go quite according to plan, as it was a long strip and didn’t stick completely flat, so the creases were squashed flat with the handle of the craft knife. I did try ironing these flat, but this didn’t work and actually made it slightly worse, but it’s not THAT noticeable.

The walls were then glued to the perimeter of the floor, then the file cabinets and grandfather clock were glue to the internal walls and the pot plant and central console placed, which just about completes the control room, as shown below;

A few close-ups to give a better idea of how everything scales together – here’s Tara having just come in to the Tardis from outside, showing the exterior door and one of the filing cabinets. You can see where the creases are in the plastic around the door and where I attempted to rectify this with the iron. It’s not that bad…

And the Doctor checking out the scanner, which also shows the pot plant and the grandfather clock. I can see that the pot needs a bit more paint on the inside, which, as it has not been secured yet, can still be done.

And a close-up of the central console. This has not been completely finished, as the cardstock control panel section is not yet glued in place and I’m undecided whether the base needs to be painted Brass-y or can stay Bronze;

Now, this is the FUN part. If you look at the picture above, you can see that rubber sleeve under the console is now painted bronze and has interesting lines scribed into it. If you recall, this was originally blue. And, if you remember earlier, I did say I’d explain why I’d made a hole in the floor…

As the transparent plastic tube is open at the bottom AND not covered, the idea was to feed a LED or other small light up inside it, so as to illuminate the Time Rotor. In order to test this idea, I sat the whole diorama on top of a big torch, covered the top with a circular placemat and turned it on.

This is the result;

Not only has the top of the Time Rotor illuminated and cast its light on the ‘ceiling’, the blue of the plastic sleeve shines through the base of the console and the floor is also glowing red, purely from sitting on top of the torch.

Which is pretty damn awesome.

To paraphrase Kelis;

“My Tardis brings all the fans to the yard,
And they’re like, it’s better than yours,
Damn right it’s better than yours,
I can teach you, but you have to understand non-Euclidean geometry….”

Right, time for an announcement. Whilst May is Monster May (Hem) month, June is Forgotten Heroes month. I’m announcing it now to explain the rules and to give everyone a chance to order whatever figures they need to participate, if they so wish.

Rules are as follows; during June, you must produce at least one figure to represent a fictional character which has not yet had a decent figure made for it yet. It can be from any source, be it a movie, TV series, book or comic and in any scale. The base figure you use CANNOT be a figure designed to be the character you are producing, so no using Miniature Figurines Retro Space Pilot as a base for Dan Dare, as it was designed to represent this character. Can be as simple as repainting a Heroclix Blue Beetle as Goldbug to ‘doing a Roger’ and sculpting your figure from scratch.

I shall be falling in the middle and converting an existing figure into a character I want, which, bearing in mind my current project, is Doctor Who related.

If you want to take part, post a comment on here stating you want to join in and I will add you to the list of participants.

Which character have you always craved a figure of, which no-one has made yet? Now’s your chance to make that unique figure just for yourself.

That’s all for this time – join me next time for (hopefully) the completion of my entries for Monster May(Hem), but definitely MORE Doctor Who.