Quad bike galore

I'm really fond of the way the first 3D games looked, and ever since I discovered Pepakura, I love how you can recreate that polygonal goodness almost perfectly in paper: the quad bikes were so much fun when I first played Tomb Raider 3, I have no idea why I didn't make paper models of them before...

But now I finally have, with 4 different body kits:

• Red and white quad bike from the trainings level.
• Green camouflaged quad bike from the "River Ganges" level.
• Brown/tan camouflaged quad bike from the "Nevada Desert" level.
• White and yellow "S.L.I.N.C." quad bike from the Lost Artifact add-on ("Shakespeare Cliff" level).

Oddly enough, even though the models are all basically the same, the texture mapping is different due to the method used in the ripping process (I think...?). So it was actually a bit more work than I hoped to create all four different quad bikes...

But it was worth it, because I am happy with the results. I also included a blank template for you to print on colored cardstock, or to color yourself to make your own designs.

And last but not least, there is an extra bonus that I kept a secret: Lara Croft in classic Tomb Raider 3 style to ride them. The parts and instructions are available from my papercraft webpage, have fun building!

greetz ninjatoes

"King of Red Lions" Great Sea base

Those of you who like to watch the "hall of fame" on my website, will probably have noticed the awesome looking Great Sea base Josh Darrah made for the "King of Red Lions" he built.

It's his own scratchbuilt work, but I asked him if he would be willing to share it with the rest of us, and he is: it's just going to take him some time to put together a template file so it can be shared.

He will get back to me when he finishes it, so just be patient, and in the meantime you could start working on King?

greetz ninjatoes

Tomb Raider 3 quad bike update

To celebrate the end of my three week vacation (yeah right, like that's any reason to celebrate..........) I bring you an update on my paper Tomb Raider quad bike project.

As I suspected, the unfolding didn't cause any real problems, but the test test build did reveal a few imperfections of the kind that you easily overlook when staring at a computer screen, like one or two folds that go one direction on one side, but on the other side they go the other direction... But I already fixed these and unfolded the fixed parts again, so I'll make it available from my website some time this week (I hope) so you too can relive the polygon nineties. ;o)

greetz ninjatoes