You never know

Hero Clothes Link from Twilight Princess seems to be on top of everybody's wishlist to be paperfied (including mine: The legend of Zelda is just so much fun to play! ;o)

I'm not sure whether or not that should be my "holiday papercraft project" though (my vacation starts next week, yay! ;o) because it will take such a long time: if I work on it all day long, by the time I can start unfolding, my vacation will probably be over again...

You never know, though. Maybe I'll get a good idea for a nice pose (instead of this lame one... ;o) and get all excited about it...

Zelda, Final Fantasy, or something completely different?

After finishing the Extreme Depth Suit, I'm already itching to start on a new papercraft model!

But which one? And when I start on one model, I'll have to postpone all the other ones...! ;o)

Oh well, I guess there's only one thing to do then: play videogames while I ponder the problem... ;o)

Tomb Raider Chronicles Extreme Depth Suit, have fun building!

I just finished replaying "The Cistern"; Lara needs two Rusty Keys, two Silver Keys and one Gold Key to exit the level.

She should really learn how to pick a lock. Skills like that may come in handy when you're a Tomb Raider.

More importantly:

• download Tomb Chronicles Extreme Depth Suit papercraft model

Have fun building!

American McGee's Alice IV

While finishing the instructions on the Extreme Depth Suit, I thought I'd share this with you: a papercraft model of American McGee's Alice.

After Ohemul's version (Alice is not available, but his White King is), Killero94's version on Deviantart and my own version right here, a fan on the American McGee's Alice forums has now also made his own, including the weapons from the game:

• download American McGee's Alice papercraft model IV

Have fun building!

Finished!

Well almost...

With the final build complete as you can see, I can now (well, tomorrow... ;o) start making the instructions for the EDS, so I think it's safe to say I'll be able to release it later this week.

Stay tuned!

Or you can keep it simple(r)

People were wondering about the transparant visor for Lara's Extreme Depth Suit.

Transparant parts are great for things like these because you can see through them, but of course they also show things that you would rather hide; like glueing tabs...

The best solution is not to have glueing tabs underneath the transparant parts of course, so that's what I did: I only kept the glueing tabs around the edges and cut off the two in the center.

So you need a different way to have the visor keep its shape. And you can do that with tension.

The transparant sheet is a bit stiff and rigid, and because I made nice, sharp folds, it already kept most of its shape (that's why scoring and pre-shaping are so important on models like these).

Then you can "lock" the edges of the visor in place by glueing them to the other parts. When you pull them nice and tight so you get some tension in the sheet, the "loose edges" will be pulled together automatically and if you made clean, straight cuts, you can hardly tell that there's a gap between them!

Or you can use the opaque visor and keep it simple(r). ;o)

EDS ETA: 1 week from now(-ish)

Obviously, the transparant visor requires a bit of planning on how to build it, especially the order in which to glue the parts together, and where to place extra glueing tabs.

But with the findings from the test build, I think I got it now (I think ;o).

Everything's unfolded (again) this time with the proper glueing tabs and cut up properly, so I can pretty much make the templates now and start the final build and instruction making. It's not a very complex model and shouldn´t have a lot of steps, so I should have it finished within a week or so.

Stay tuned!

Lara Croft EDS test build complete

Test build complete! And the good news is, that I also already fixed all the things I wanted to fix that I found out about during the test build (like the waterjet engines, for example).

As you can see, I only build one waterjet engine and one arm, because the other ones are basically the same.

But I did build both legs, to test the balance. It will change a bit of course with the extra arm and engine, but the balance is very easily corrected by glueing on the right foot a bit differently if need be, so I don't think balance will be a problem! ;o)

Ben 10 Omnitrix by Ryan Mangion

Papercraft has become very popular the past two years or so, and a lot of people are also creating their own models now.

And that's exactly what Ryan Mangion did: he made a papercraft Omnitrix from the Ben 10 cartoon!

In the cartoon, the Omnitrix is a device that allows the main character Ben to change form into several different aliens! (I'll let you do the guessing how many different forms Ben can assume... ;o)

Ryan made his paper version of the Omnitrix wearable around the wrist just like in the cartoon as you can see, and he also made the silhouettes of the different aliens interchangeable, so you can choose which one you would like to be!

• download Ryan Mangion's papercraft Ben 10 Omnitrix

Have fun building!

TR:Chronicles Extreme Depth Suit nearing completion

There are actually a few things I want to share with you guys, but since it's been a couple of days already since the last update on the EDS already, I think I'll tell you about that first.

I've already been fixing a few small things that I wanted to change after test building the other parts, and I think I will "fix" the mount for the small waterjet engines as well.

I kept it as one part, and of course it's buildable that way, but the parts are rather thin, and it makes it a bit more difficult than it could be I think. It'll be a quick fix though, so it's not a major setback. ;o)

Stay tuned!

Orange Star wants YOU!

Here's the Advance Wars unit I was working on alongside of the Tomb Raider EDS, have fun building!

• download Orange Star Missiles

Humpty dumpty papercroft?

As promised, here's an update on the EDS test build.

It's not a very difficult model, so it's going pretty quickly, although fitting the inside of the suit inside the helmet properly might require some patience.

And as always, there a couple of things that I want to fix before releasing it. Note that I built the visor out of regular cardstock here, but that's just because it's just the test build.

And maybe on the final model when the visor will be transparant, it might actually be easier to fit the inside of the suit inside the helmet, when you can actually see what you're doing... ;o)

Stay tuned!

Tomb Raider diorama by Elso

I made some good progress test building the Extreme Depth Suit, but I'll show you tomorrow, because today I want to show you something else!

I got something really cool in my inbox yesterday, a little diorama made by Elso combining some of my Tomb Raider models and some of Sascha's.

You may know Elso from some of his other projects (like a life sized Terminator endoskeleton... ;o) but I never knew he was a Tomb Raider fan!

I have to say it looks really great, and he even explained how he did it in a thread at the Spanish speaking Modelos de Papel forum (although you have to be a member to view the thread...)

Maybe the pictures (there are a lot more in the MDP forum thread...!) will inspire you to do something similar? ;o)

Have fun building!

The next step: test building

I'm just going straight from the 3D to the test build, to see if everything works out the way I planned. So far so good... ;o)

Take a look inside

As you can see, the plan is to make the visor of the Extreme Depth Suit transparant, so you can see Lara's head inside.

Although there are special printable transparancies, those are quite expensive, and since there won't be any special textures on the visor, I think it will be better to just use a normal transparant sheet.

I'm anxious to try it out, because I think it will look pretty nice! But for those that can't be bothered with the transparant parts (it will make assembling the torso a bit more difficult...!) I'll also include an opaque visor. ;o)

Stay tuned!

Lara from the waist up

Well, except her head yet... ;o)

But if it keeps going like this, I'll have that done soon enough as well. Redesigning the joints to make them suited to make in paper form is really the most time consuming part on this particular model.

I'll have to think of something to easily tell how to glue the hips together, because it's important to glue on the angled parts correctly so the balance will be good and Lara won't tip over... ;o)

Stay tuned!

Lara Croft below the belt

Unlike on a Twilight Princess model like ZaL, the changes made to simplify a model from an "old" game like Tomb Raider Chronicles, are often a lot more subtle (but no less important).

Tomb Raider III blank quad bike templates re-release

Maybe it's because I started my new Tomb Raider papercraft project, but I received several messages from people about the TR3 quad bike model I made earlier.

I released several versions of that one, including a blank one that you could print on coloured cardstock, or that you could colour yourself.

But therein lies the problem for the people that e-mailed me: they didn't know how to edit the PDF files on the computer, so I decided to release the blank quad bike as plain jpeg files, that everybody should be able to work with (but of course if you want to, you can also colour them after you printed them! ;o)

If you want to mix and match components with the coloured versions, make sure to print them at the same scale. The instructions stay the same of course, have fun building!

• download blank quad bike body kit
• download blank quad bike wheels