Nintendo Papercraft Pokémon contest

Nintendo Papercraft just announced a new papercraft contest, this time you need to design and build your own Pokémon papercraft model to win one of the prizes!

This is Nintendo Papercraft's second contest again already, the first one (with a Banjo-Kazooie theme) was won by Navi's Banjo and Kazooie relaxing in a comfy chair model (I had a feeling it would ;o)

But this time you have a new chance to win! If you want to enter, you can read more about the rules and prizes at the Nintendo Papercraft weblog: A new contest: Pokémon!

Have fun!

Cut & Paste Sci-Fi working papercraft Rubik's Cube!

Cut & Paste Sci-Fi has several science fiction models to download and build, but it's worth taking a look in the non sci-fi section too: one of the paper models you can find there, is a working Rubik's Cube!

I'm sure everybody knows the world famous puzzle cube. You mix up the colours, and try to get them back together again by turning the blocks.

Many a mathematician has spent hours on end calculating the total number of different possibilities, and this is what they came up with: 43,252,003,274,489,856,000 (the word you're looking for is 43 "quintillion")

But that's not the impressive part. The impressive part is, that you can solve all of those, in 25 moves or less...

If you don't go mad building all the delicate little pieces out of paper and getting them to work properly, you *will* go mad trying out if there really are 43 quintillion different possibilities...

• https://www.paperformed.com/free-models.html (free acount required now)

Have fu... Good luck building..!

(old link: http://home.hetnet.nl/~erwin47/models/nonsf/)

Working on the main project again

Although of course I spent most of my weekend finishing the Orange Star Rocket unit and instructions, I did do *some* work on my main project.

Most of it were fixes though, things I already changed from the original 3D model but that I still wasn't happy with. But that's progress too. The best kind actually, I think. Even though it can sometimes feel like taking a step back, it's really just a slightly slower path allowing you to take your time more, still going forward. ;o)

Chamoo232's Bioshock's "Big Daddy"

Many papercrafters have been waiting anxiously for the release of this Bioshock "Big Daddy" model from Chamoo232.

It already looked wonderful in the WIP pictures, so not surprisingly everybody wanted to have it "nao!!" but it took Chamoo232 a while to get it ready for release.

Which would be "nao", btw:

• download Chamoo 232's Bioshock "Big Daddy"

Have fun building!

Advance Wars Orange Star Rocket unit

Here's step 6 regarding "how to build a paper rocket launcher". I think it's pretty self-explanatory.

You can get the files from my website:

• download the Advance Wars Orange Star Rocket unit

Have fun building!

Red Hollow Cylinder tutorial

The Red Hollow Cylinder. In it lies the soul of an evil papercraftsman, who could not find joy in the paper models he made.

Bittered and lonely, with his dying breath he put a curse on the last papercraft he ever made, and then he let it loose on the world. Its sole purpose: to frustrate those that cannot build it, no matter how hard they try, and rob them of any joy they have building paper models...

Now it counts as a test of skill for those seeking to prove themselves strong enough to become Papercraft Masters.

Do you have what it takes?

• download the Red Hollow Cylinder template

Good luck!

How to make a paper rocket launcher: steps 4 and 5

I'm planning on getting some real work done again on my main project during the weekend, but now that I'm this far on my Orange Star Rocket unit, I will also be aiming to release it from my website in the next few days.

How far I am exactly, you ask?

Well, I colored the parts yesterday, which is step 4. For my Advance Wars series, I use magic markers to do so, for my hand drawn Star Trek series I use water colors.

I also finished step 5 already: scanning the colored parts to copy+paste them together on the sheets in Photoshop. In fact, I'm taking a break from adding part numbers to post this message. ;o)

How to make a paper rocket launcher: step 3

After drawing the parts with pencil and test building the model to make sure all the parts fit together properly, I like to trace the parts with a black ink pen, and erase all the pencil lines.

Then I scan the parts again before I colour them, so should I mess up, I always have a proper back up... ;o)

Side project: Advance Wars Rocket Launcher

As I said, I started doing some side projects to keep my main project from getting too tedious. And some of these side projects are a lot faster to make. ;o)

One of the side projects is this Orange Star Rocket Launcher from the Game Boy Advance game Advance Wars.

With my main project taking so much work on the computer, I wanted to make a paper model by hand again, and a simple Advance Wars unit seemed perfect for that. In "6 easy steps", I'll show you how it comes to life (well not really of course, but at least it gets made from a 2D image into a 3D model you can hold ;o)

You'll notice that this is step 2, because I thought you can figure out step 1 yourselves... ;o)

Secret project update: not "bacon Lara"

The shoulders are always a troublesome part to make in paper. And especially on this secret project of mine...

I tried out the first idea I had (basically cutting away the shape of the shoulders from the torso, and then attaching the shoulders+arms) but even while I was modeling it, I didn't think it was going to look very good...

And a quick test build confirmed that it looked absolutely awful.

So awful in fact, that the only solution is to take a step back and completely redo the shoulders. I have a new idea now which will look *a lot* better. I already trashed the old shoulders in shame... ;o)

The modeling is taking me a long time because it's a difficult model which makes it tedious sometimes. I actually started two projects on the side that I can do when I'm a bit tired of it. I might update you on those soon.

And before anybody asks: my secret project is not the "flesh creature" from Tomb Raider 1/Anniversary. "Bacon Lara" *is* on my to do-list, but not right now. ;o)

killero94's American McGee's Alice

Yes, a double post today, because I just found out that killero94 has released his American McGee's Alice model!

The download includes BMP bitmap images as a lined and lineless version, and the Pepakura PDO-file for building reference (you'll need Pepakura Viewer to open it).

download killero94's American McGee's Alice

Have fun building!

Legend of Zelda Miniblins by WoW's PMF

Although the WoW unofficial papercrafts blog focuses mainly on World of Warcraft models, sometimes PMF makes other models as well.

Like these great looking Miniblins from the Legend of Zelda: the Wind Waker. There's also a Picto Box, Skull Hammer and a Dragonite Pokémon (and many World of Warcraft models of course):

• download PMF's miniblins

Have fun building!

Memory Lane

I'm afraid I didn't really make any progress on my newest project, because I've been busy with other stuff...

I found myself pondering the years past, fun times and not so fun times, amongst the fun times of course was the moment when I first discovered papercraft on the world wide web!

We had just got our first computer and internet, because even back then, you couldn't really do without anymore for school assignments. Of course I also used it to look up any Star Trek and Star Wars website I could find. ;o)

And that was when I found my first paper models of R2-D2, an Imperial Star Destroyer and several starships and even some Japanese sites I didn't understand, but the models looked mighty cute.

Back then, papercraft wasn't very well known yet, but there already were a lot of papercraft websites with all kinds of models. I always wanted to make my own model, but I just didn't know how. I had never heard of Pepakura Designer and didn't have a clue how to make one using simple graphics software.

But then I got a flatbed scanner (for school again ;o) and I figured I could just draw the parts by hand, colour them with magic markers, and then scan them to the computer!

So that's what I did. I chose the Samurai Pizza Cats pizza parlour headquarters to be the very first paper model I would make myself, because it didn't exist yet, and I was a big fan of the show. To share it with all the other people like they had done with their models, I signed up at Lycos and made my very first homepage. It's gone now, but I tracked back an archived version from October 16, 2002: Ninjatoes papercraft website version 1

After that, I made several paper Star Trek ships that didn't exist yet and it must have been somewhere early in 2003 when I "revamped" my website, because I was having a lot of trouble with Lycos and its limitations: Ninjatoes version 2 and a later capture.

Version 3 is basically what you see now at http://members.home.nl/saarloos/ although over the years, I added a few new models every now and then of course. ;o)

It's been a very fun hobby for me, and I hope it is for all of you as well!!

Secret project first parts test build

Well, here's another update on my secret project: I'm slowly getting there. ;o)

After working off and on on the 3D model the past week and a half, I have finally re-built most of the parts in such a way that I think they'll be easy enough to build in paper, and I only have a few more parts left to work on.

So because I had enough of this tedious work for now, I decided to unfold the first few parts in Pepakura Designer to see if things will work out the way I hope they will...

I'm afraid this doesn't mean I'm nearly finished, though: I always find things to fix during the test building, even on small and relatively simple parts like these...

Know that this is just a quick screencap, so I'll probably find a better, more logical way to unfold the parts on the final model, and I also didn't fix the tabs yet; you probably won't even recognize these parts on the final template. ;o)

Or maybe you will, because I'm sure you already recognized them to be the legs, right? ;o)

What I'm trying to say, is: test building the model isn't the final stage in making a paper model, for me it's just another step in between, helping me to find any flaws that I overlooked so I can fix them *before* I finalize the model, rather than finding out afterwards that "it could have been better..."

So like I said: I'm slowly getting there, but it's not quite done yet. I'm not even sure I'll be able to finish the rest of the work on the 3D model coming weekend as I had hoped to, because I haven't been able to do much work on it during the past few days...

Keep your eyes peeled for new updates on my secret project. Even though I'm trying to hide what it is exactly, I will try to keep you up to date on its status.

And before I forget: I just put up a new clue on my blog...

PaperCraft Museum adult Link stop motion build video!

Haywan Chiu (who you all know from the PaperCraft Museum of course! ;o) made another one of his stop motion papercraft build videos, and this time it's my own SSB:M adult Link model! (get it from my website)

When you watch the video, you'll see he enlarged it for his build. It's one of the (if not *the*) most detailed models I made, and because of this, it occurred to me that it would be possible to not actually fold all the fold lines, but just let the paper curve the way it wants to where possible (like I did later on with my Tomb Raider: Legend Lara Croft and Final Fantasy models).

Haywan had the same idea, and decided to try it out. Now I know I'm not *complety* unbiased, but you have to admit that it looks absolutely awesome!

Be sure to check out his Cloud and Naruto stop motion build videos as well!

Have fun watching!

Latest papercraft project status report

I didn't have a whole lot of time to work on my latest papercraft project this weekend, I think the preliminary work on the 3D model is about 70% done.

I know in the image it looks like there's a lot more blue, but the work that has yet to be done concerns the shoulders, wrists and hands, which are always a lot of work and are even a bit more troublesome on this particular model. I also still need to fix some textures, because all the changes I made require some adjustments.

I'm thinking about making the hands very detailed (10 seperate fingers), because I think it will look really good on this particular model. But a test build (which I'm hoping to start next weekend) will tell if doing so will throw off the balance between the level of detail on the different parts of the model or not.

Icthus7's Ocarina of Time Ganondorf

Some of you may know Icthus7 from the paper models he made in the past. Not all of them are available for download, but recently he made his own weblog where he will post his models that are.

The blog is in Spanish, but you can just look at the pictures and search for the words "descargarlo AQUÍ" (which means "download HERE") underneath the posts. His latest one is Ganondorf, from the Nintendo 64 Legend of Zelda game Ocarina of Time.

I had a lot of trouble downloading it from 4Shared, but after a lot of trying, I finally managed to get the file:

• download Icthus7's Ganondorf model

Have fun building!

Secret project update

No, my secret project is not Lucy Liu (maybe next time).

But the screen capture shows the basic pose my new model will be in. In the movie Charlie's Angels, Lucy Liu has to play a bitchy efficiency trainer in order to keep the workers of a computer software company busy while her fellow spies gain access to the computer server.

The plan works: at first, the room full of computer engineers is shocked by the bitchy Lucy Liu in her tight leather outfit whipping around her bullwhip and don't know how to react. It's no problem for Lucy Liu to win their trust and wrap them around her little finger, and when she changes roles into a simple little schoolgirl asking for their help, the crowd (all men... ;o) is willing to do anything for her of course...

Between last weekend and now, changing the standard pose of the model I'm working on into this variation of a contra posto is all I've done so far actually. It was *a lot* of work to fix all the pieces that got messed up from changing the stance, but it's worth the effort I think: it perfectly captures the moment in the story I made up around it I think.

The hands will be in a different position though, because although my model will also be playing the innocent schoolgirl card, you will get a clue she is not as innocent as she seems...

Stay tuned!

Armor Bimbo's Warhammer 40k Leviathan Crusader Titan and Firefly "Serenity"

Even if you haven't played it yourself, at one point or another, you have probably heard about the tabletop game Warhammer 40k. It is played with armies of miniature figurines, although some models can't really be called "miniatures" anymore...

Your average soldier in Warhammer 40k scale isn't very big, but the biggest of the Titans (a class of mechanized units) can be several feet tall! These Imperator Titans are quite literally walking castles, and dwarf all other units!

The look *really* cool, and are also *really* expensive (you already need a lot of money to even just assemble yourself a regular Warhammer 40k army...) and there are only a limited few of them around.

Sean, a.k.a. Armor Bimbo actually created one from scratch, being inspired after seeing a picture of the Leviathan Crusader from Dream Forge Games.

He allowed me to share it with you, and although it is untextured, you can get some pretty cool results: Shaun from Tanks and Trolls built some of Armor Bimbo's other models, like the Serenity spaceship and Mule vehicle (from the science fiction series Firefly) and the Paladin Knight (another, smaller Warhammer 40k Titan)

As you can see, you can get some pretty good (understatement of the century...) results if you put in a little work!

• download Warhammer 40k Leviathan Crusader (+Blockhead conversion)
• download Warhammer 40k Paladin Knight
• download Firefly "Serenity"
• download Firefly "Mule"

Have fun building!

(PS: I uploaded another clue to my secret project to my weblog; this time it's a lot harder to miss ;o)