Thursday, November 28, 2019

Papercraft Star Trek Galileo 5 working model done


This is pretty much how far I'll take the working model for the papercraft Galileo 5 shuttlecraft. As you can see, the working model is actually missing one side, but as I explained before for paper models like this I mirror the necessary parts on the templates so I can make sure they'll be more symmetrical than if I were to draw them by hand separately. 😇

So now I've got some first test templates that I can use to see if the paper model will go together the way I planned, so next thing will be to do a real test build.

Stay tuned!

Wednesday, November 27, 2019

Wanna papercraft a cute girl engineer? Or a cute girl "Gatekeeper of Hell"? Try the Touhou series. ;o)


Nitori Kawashiro and Kutaka Niwatari are two characters from the Touhou games series. Like all characters, they are designed as cute girls: Nitori being an engineer, and Kutaka being the Gatekeeper of HELL...!! 😈👧

Download + build your own free papercraft Touhou girls (by Nobi):
http://sumatorausagi.seesaa.net/article/471743469.html

(download instructions: click the green ".zip" links in the post on Nobi's weblog)

Sunday, November 24, 2019

Papercraft Star Trek Galileo 5 shuttle working model WIP


A quick update on my papercraft Star Trek V Galileo 5 shuttlecraft; I've been working on the hull and the impulse engines as you can see, and the little 'wings' on the sides. The back panel was tricky, because as I showed you in the last post, the sources don't really agree on its exact shape...

So I used my own interpretation, and I also wanted to make it in such a way that it would be part of the shape of the impulse engines. I like how it turned out, and although the impulse engines are not finished yet, I like the shape they have. They still need to the front and back edges, and the nacelles need to be added, and then this working model is pretty much already done! 🚀😃

When I have drawn out all the parts, I will scan them and do a first test build, to check if everything fits properly with glueing tabs instead of painter's tape before I colour it.

Stay tuned!

Wednesday, November 20, 2019

Getting a papercraft Star Trek shuttle shipshape?


So, a quick note about me making my papercraft Star Trek models; most of them (except The Next Generation's Enterprise-D) I made by hand, drawing the papercraft pieces on a piece of paper, then testing whether they fit and if they do, colouring them and then scanning them to make papercraft templates to print.

To do so, I just print views of the top, bottom, front, back and side views of the model I want to make in the scale that I want to make it (for the Galileo 5, I'm aiming at a scale of 1:48, which would make the papercraft about 19 cm long) so that I can easily get 1:1 measurements of those for the papercraft. But the thing with Star Trek ships, is that more often than not, no two schematics for the same ship are the same... 😆

Sure, the overall shape is the same, but details and sizes usually have differences between sources. There are not a lot of schematics for the Galileo 5 shuttlecraft to begin with, but I found some schematics on the Starship Schematics Database, three views from on the Federation Star Ship Datalink and even an Okudagram included with the Eaglemoss Star Trek model of the Galileo 5 shuttle, and as you can see in the image above they all have small differences...

The side view and the schematic seem to be closer related than the Okudagram, and because the schematics come as a full set of views (the coloured views are missing a bottom and a top view, and the Okudagram is only a section view) I decided to work from those.

Of course I also found lots of reference pictures, which (as usual 😉) show some differences. On this picture of a studio model on ST-Bilder.de the front on the nacelles is rounded instead of square, while the impulse engines on the studio model have more sharper angles than shown in the schematics for example:


Like I said, I'll be drawing the parts just by hand, so it will by no means be a perfect scale model of the studio model anyway, and with all this in mind (I papercraft just for fun 😉) the final paper model will be more of an amalgamation of several sources and my own interpretation. 😇

So I started trying the basic shipshape, well, shipshape. 😉


With the measurements from the 1:48 scale schematics, I made a structure that I can 'skin' with paper, and those will be the 2D parts that I will draw on a piece of paper to scan later on to make digital papercraft templates. For models like this that are pretty much symmetrical, I usually also only make one side that I can then simply mirror in Photoshop to make a complete model. If I were to draw both sides separately, I would probably not be able to draw an exact mirror image, and then in the end I would probably have a lobsided shuttlecraft...😉

Stay tuned!

Cleaned up & colourized versions of Dennis Kauth scifi tabletop game ATV & spacecraft card models


Remember a little while ago I mentioned the scifi tabletop game vehicles that Roebeast got from the friends of Dennis Kauth (link)?

Thomas let me know again via the Star Frontiers: Alive & Well Facebook group that now you can download cleaned up versions directly from Roebeast's Magical House of Sunshine (courtesy of Ruben, who also provided the built pictures so you can see what they look like when assembled) and even a colourized version that Roebeast made of them!

Download + build your own cleaned up and colourized versions of Dennis Kauth scifi card models (by Roebeast's Magical House of Sunshine):
https://roebeast.blogspot.com/2019/11/digitally-colored-version-of-kauth-atv.html

Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Next papercraft: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier Galileo 5 shuttlecraft


So with another papercraft done (link), I’m thinking about the next one. So far, my five newest papercrafts have all been made using the computer and Pepakura Designer, so I really feel like making one by hand using just a pencil and a piece of paper again. And what better subject for that than a new Star Trek model! (I want to try to update all the categories on my papercraft webpage with new papercrafts again to breathe some life into them again; my latest Star Trek papercraft is from 2008!) 🚀

I don't want to make one of the big starships though, so I chose the Galileo 5 shuttlecraft from The Final Frontier movie. I never really watched The Original Series, but I do enjoy the movies and I thought this shuttlecraft actually looks quite Next Generation-ish. 😉

I think I will be working on that side by side with a new Tomb Raider vignette; I have so many ideas for new Tomb Raider papercrafts now that I think I should really get some of them done because the ideas just keep piling up... I’ve  actually been playing the classic Tombraider games up to Chronicles the past few weeks and months, and Legend and Angel of Darkness before that so yeah: lots of ideas. 😉 Some of them I’ve actually been thinking about ever since I made the Home Sweet Home vignette (link) and which I actually worked on a bit already, so it makes sense to finish one of those first, but we’ll see.

Stay tuned!

Saturday, November 16, 2019

Free papercraft Final Fantasy X Iron Giant RELEASE



I finished the instructions, made a release video, and uploaded the Iron Giant parts to my papercraft webpage to download for free. 😊

He was fun to make, despite my initial concerns that he might end up too small because I had to fit some very large parts on A4 sheets of paper for home printing. But in the end, I ended up liking his 'bulky' size. He reminds me of other 'golems' like Pokémon's Golurk or Battle Chasers' Calibretto:

 a Pokémon Golurk or Battle Chasers Calibretto, a Final Fantasy Iron Giant does not make... 😉

But of course, he's nothing alike! (well... 😉) I wasn't able to make him to scale with my other Final Fantasy X papercrafts, but I hope you like him nonetheless!






Download + build your own free papercraft Final Fantasy X Iron Giant:


Have fun building!

Friday, November 15, 2019

Download this Trojan Horse now! It's free - and it's just a papercraft ;o)


Most people think they know the story of the famous Trojan Horse from the classical epic the Iliad by the Greek poet Homer,  which after all is all about the Trojan War - even though the story of Odysseus' trick to hide a group of Greek soldiers inside a giant wooden horse left after the Greeks pretend to sail home in their ships, to get the Trojans to take the horse into their city as a prize so the group can sneak out at night and open the city gates for the main army is never mentioned in what we're left with of Homer's epic. 🐴

Download + build your own free papercraft Trojan Horse (+lots more, by Niku Mansei):
https://www.niku-mansei.com/contents/05club/club02paper_craft.html

(please note: my antivirus software didn't find any problems, but of course I can not be held accountable if you decide to download a Trojan Horse from the internet to your computer! 😇)

Tuesday, November 12, 2019

papercraft Final Fantasy X Lulu vs Paper Giant


The instructions are coming along nicely, but for everybody (anybody? 😆) wondering about the size of the Iron Giant compared to my other papercrafts like Lulu, here's a picture (Lulu is about 24 cm tall).

So you can see the Iron Giant is not so tall, despite needing 15 sheets of paper; the large parts are pretty nice to handle though, compared to some of Puppet Zelda's for example! 😉

Friday, November 8, 2019

Thursday, November 7, 2019

free papercraft Panhard EBR 75 armoured vehicle


"World of Tanks"? More like world of World of Free Papercraft Armoured Vehicles, amirite? 😁

Download + build your own free papercraft Panhard EBR 75 armoured vehicle (+lots more, by World of Tanks):
https://worldoftanks.ru/ru/media/10/

Monday, November 4, 2019

Dennis Kauth scifi tabletop game ATV & spacecraft card models


Thomas sent me a message on Facebook to have a look at a post by Roebeast, who was given a card model kit of some science fiction crafts made in 1982 by Dennis Kauth, a well-known model-maker for TSR (the original publishers of the tabletop Dungeons & Dragons games).

The people who gave it to him were friends of Dennis and wanted it to be scanned and distributed to other gamers who might enjoy it. Although Roebeast never built the models, he did put the scans on his weblog; the pictures are from Ruben, who did a nice review giving some hints and tips too on the Paper Modelers forum: link. The ATV and flying craft even have a nice interior!

Roebeast's scans do have a heavy grey mask, but people on Facebook have already taken up the task of removing that grey colour and whitening up the background for printing, and I'm sure Roebeast will replace the original scans with cleaner ones when he can.

So you might want to check back on Roebeast's weblog for cleaned versions, or you can try cleaning up the scans yourself, as it's easy enough to get a decent result for printing by playing around with the image levels in Photoshop or Gimp: just drag the whitepoint/highlight slider (the little white triangle in the image levels dialog box) to the left until the background is nice and white.



Download + build your own Dennis Kauth scifi card models (by Dennis Kauth on Roebeast's Magical House of Sunshine):
https://roebeast.blogspot.com/2019/10/kauth-atv-card-model.html

Sunday, November 3, 2019

papercraft Final Fantasy X Iron Giant test build finished


Okay so if youv'e been reading the last few 'work in progress' posts on my papercraft Iron Giant (link), you know I was a little bit worried about the scale/size.

But with the test build done (yes, I know I test built only one hand 😉) I ended up actually quite liking it! 😃

At this size, I can *just* fit the biggest parts on a sheet of A4 paper, so that's just fine. It does mean that he will take up quite a few sheets of paper for being actually only 30 centimeters tall, but I guess that's because he's so... wide. 😉

There's also a big difference in the model itself; normally the parts on a certain papercraft are relatively in proportion with each other. Not so much with this Iron Giant: some parts are as big as a sheet of paper, while especially the head has much smaller and thinner parts.

So that's another reason I don't want to make the scale even smaller; if I would, the smallest parts would get even smaller and thinner, and would become too small to handle really...


So I think my worries about the size were for naught. 30 centimeters is actually quite a nice size, even if that means he will be smaller than Lulu and Auron (he still has Rikku beat size-wise though! 😉)

So now I will change the final things on the 3D model so I can do the final unfold and make the templates; then I will do the final build while taking pictures for the instructions, and once those are done, he'll be really finished!

Stay tuned!

Friday, November 1, 2019

papercraft Final Fantasy X Iron Giant test build cont'd


Yesterday being Halloween and all (Hallows Eve 😉) I *had* to release my Dungeon Keeper 2 Horned Reaper Halloween 2019 papercraft of course, but I kept working on the Final Fantasy X Iron Giant test build!

It's going together pretty nicely so far as you can see; I used the opportunity to see whether I would want to cut up the 'arm spheres' (what else am I gonna call those things?) lengthwise or widthwise (I'm thinking lengthwise) and of course just to see if everything fits the way I imagined in my head and if the build order I thought would work would, well, work?

So far so good (with the obligatory tricky parts as always...) but you can see there are still some parts missing; I'll work on those next of course, stay tuned!

November is the season of... papercraft shoe shaped gifts??


Each month this year, Sasatoku has been making small papercraft gift boxes or envelopes having something to do with the season. This month, Google Translate tells me "靴型ギフト" means "shoe shaped gifts".

...

Thank you Google, I would never have guessed and it clears up so much... 👞👞

Download + build your own free papercraft shoe shaped gifts (+lots more, by Sasatoku):
https://www.sasatoku.co.jp/html/papercraft/