Tag: Design

Categories
Design Urban papercraft

Another post about Nice Paper Toys

I’m a member of Nice Paper Toys, well I’m also one of the four Featured Members of NPT.

Update #1: it seems that Nicebunny has a identity crisis (read more about this) and wants to be called by his normal name: Castelforte…… no problem…

Brian Castelforte aka “NiceBunny” (Brian) Castleforte (aka “no longer NiceBunny”) started this social network for papertoy designers and it’s still growing. We now close to a 1000 members. Time to celebrate? Yes, I personally didn’t think we would get this much members, but I’m glad that I was wrong. But Nicebunny Castleforte want more, more people should know about papertoys, and I agree.

And as a good “featured member”, I will use my blog to spread the word once again.


Visit Nice Paper Toys

But what is it? What is NPT (Nice Paper Toys)?
NPT is the only papertoy network. You can show your papertoy creations. Collaborate with other artist, share you thoughts and ideas. It’s all nice, warm, fuzzy feelings, but I like it.

It a place that keeps you wanna make better stuff, become a better artist.

So if you have any questions about papertoys or NPT just leave a comment here. Or become a member and place a comment on my NPT page

Viva la paper!

header of NPT

Update #2: it seems that Castleforte is taking controle of NPT and laying down some rules:

Nice Paper Toy rules

Categories
Design Tutorials Urban papercraft

Pre-post about Urban Paper Toy tutorials

One of my most popular post is about how to create papertoys (How to create your own papercraft).
It seems that a lot of people are interested in papertoys and how to make themselves.
On Nice paper toys (NPT) this question pops up now and again on the forum.
You can buy a book about it, if you want to know more about it: Urban paper toys (well you should buy this book anyhow because I’m in it 🙂 ).

But besides my post about this subject you’re on your own…..
Well perhaps not for long! I’ve been playing with this idea for a while now of making a tutorial series about papertoy and how you can make one yourself. That got me thinking….
It seems that people really enjoy making/creating papertoys, so why not make a book about it?

…… hmmm a book, I have never thought about writing a book (grammar is not really my thing, not in English and not in my native tongue), I never wrote a book or designed one (well… not recently).
So I have no idea where this series is taking me, but here it is:

I want to make a “book” about creating/designing Urban Paper toys. But I’m a internet designer/developer, I have no experience with book design, no experience with writing a book and no idea how to do it.
It doesn’t matter, I have my blog. I can write and rewrite as much as I want.
And I have something that a conventional writer doesn’t have: User generated feedback….. (no idea what that means? It’s you giving me comments/advice/whatever and helping me write this “book” by giving comments).

I say “book” because you don’t really need the book, because you can read it on my blog. But for the less internet savy peeps I can create a download link for a e-book or a you can buy a book.
I have searched for options to Self Publish and I found a couple, but these two sites seem to popup the most: lulu.com/ and booksurge.com/.
But before I can think about that, I need to write about papertoys and how they are made.

So this week I’m focusing on how I will do this on my blog.
But in the mean time, use the comments to show me what you want to know

And perhaps we will write a book 🙂

Categories
Custom Design Urban papercraft

Calling All Cars: I’m going to win this race!

In a previous post a wrote about the Calling All Cars project from Jack Hankins aka Horrorwood.

Calling all cars poster

I couldn’t help myself, and even with a broken wrist I designed a Calling All Cars-Custom:
Calling All Cars

I know that there are some other drivers in the race:
Matt Hawkins

Jerom

and of course Horrorwood himself…

But lets be realistic…. this isn’t going to be a fare race.
A bear, penguin and a monkey: they are just circus animals. And don’t get me started about the zombi.
And the tires are just so one dimensional….
If this is the best they can find for this race, we don’t even have to race and just give me my price.
whahahahahaha 🙂

Categories
Design Urban papercraft

Calling All Cars! Calling All Cars

Previous post I mentioned my broken wrist (another 5 weeks….) and the coming of the book Urban Paper from Matt Hawkins.

One of the designers started a project to promote the book. This is a project from Jack Hankins aka Horrorwood.

Calling All Cars! Calling All Cars.

Calling all cars poster

Read more about this project. Or the comments at NPT.

Download the template and lets start racing:
Calling all cars template

Categories
Design Grumm Urban papercraft

Counting down…

Good news & bad news

First the good:
The book that I’m going to be in (book “Urban Paper” from Matt Hawkins) is printed: one of these days I will get my copy!!!!
I’ve written about it here and
here.

And this is the front:
Front of Urban Paper
And this the back:
Back of Urban Paper

You ca order it at Amazon: Urban-Paper-Designer-Toys.

And when you watch the video, wait till the last page:

it’s me with Son of a Grumm

then the bad:
I broke my wrist and can’t type very fast with one hand.
So I will be posting infrequently for about 5/8 weeks.
And the subjects will be short….

Categories
Custom Design Drukk

Drukks: the Pusher Series 1 – Dr. Bear

I’m one step closer filling the 6 slots for Pusher Series 1 (Designers on Drukks).

Scott Schaller is filling the 5th slot with his Dr. Bear
Dr. Bear by Scott Schaller

An awesome design. And I love the extras Scott designed for Dr. Bear, especial the brain case.. Always wanted a evil Doctor in my papertoys collection.

Of course is Scott and Nice paper toys member, you almost have to be 😉 …

Some other nice-toknow information: Scott is a Graphic Design Teacher, which isn’t that special: a lot of papertoy designers have a creative job or education. No, besides teaching Graphic Design, Scott is also in charge of an after school program: F studio.

As a design teacher, I often throw in a lot of hand skills oriented components to the projects I assign. The computer plays a big part in all of our projects, but the finishing of a project, whether it is binding a box or constructing a packaging comp, is the part that makes the project complete. Paper toy crafting just seems to be a natural next step, combining design and illustration, hand skills, and toy making.
….
we are making our own vinyl toys, including the design, sculpting, and casting of resign models

How cool it that!!! I’m trying to figure this stuff out in my spare time and here is a teacher who can teach you everything you ever wanted to know. Man I’m jealous.
Visit Cabrillo Design Lab for more info.

Check this out: Custom self portraits by students of Scott (and himself) based upon boxy from Shin Tanaka.
Boxy student self portraits
Scott himself
Scott Schaller

And way down here on the end of the post… Scott told me that one of his students is working on a Drukk and she wants to have the last slot in series 1. Please do, you can have the last slot. And when you have filled that last spot I will start on the Selfish Series 2. 🙂
Categories
Design Open source / Freeware

List of good, free Graffiti fonts

I wanted to write about this for a long time (about a year now). A list of good, free graffiti fonts.
But I’m not really into fonts, so it seems out-of-place on this blog.

Recently I needed a good free graffiti font, and saw that there was nobody who had made that list. Well that’s not entirely true, I found one: 12-fantastically-free-graffiti-fonts/ but I don’t agree with this list.

So instead of complaining about lists that other people make, I will start my own.
I used dafont to find the font used here, because every free font ends up there.

When I see designers using a graffiti font, they tend to use: Aaaiight!/Aaaight! fat, 5cent or Bring tha noize. Although they are nice, there are better graffiti fonts.

As every list is a personal reflection of the list-makers own taste and this list is made with stuff I like.
I like the condensed, tightly spaced, big marker tags and that’s what I like in the fonts. But I’m also a designer and it’s difficult to explain to your boss, that the font is “dope” but nobody can read the message. So I also looked at lower case, upper case, if it’s more a headline font or a body font, if it’s readable, the fonts has numbers, special characters, and that is use with a very scientific method to come to this list (my guts).

But I must say, I understand why nobody ever made this list… there are not a lot of good, complete fonts out there. Probably because good graffiti artists don’t go sit down and create a font for us, they are out there creating art! To everybody on this list (and not on this list), thanks for the free fonts and the time spend on making the font.

My list is cut up in two parts:

  1. tag fonts
  2. piece fonts

Tag fonts

A “tag” is the most basic writing of an artist’s name in either spray paint or marker. A graffiti writer’s tag is his or her personalized signature.

source Wikipedia

#7. Hardkaze

Hardkaze by Pizzadude
http://www.dafont.com/hardkaze.font

Hardkaze""

  • Only Upper case. Special characters. Number
  • Readable from font size 18, good for body text and headers

[mck] This is the font that graphic designer should have chosen if he didn’t know better. It’s close to a normal handwriting and I get a “comic” vibe of it. It’s not graffiti enough, but better than the previous fonts.

#6. Vandalism

Vandalism by Julien Saurin
http://www.dafont.com/vandalism.font

Vandalism

  • Only upper case. Special characters
  • Number
  • Readable from font size 24, the bigger the better readable
  • headline fon

[mck] Really awesome font, but this one is probably not readable for “normal” viewer. But it’s freaking awesome!.

#5. Searfont

Searfont by bartolD & Sear
http://www.dafont.com/searfont.font

Searfont

  • Only upper case.
  • Special characters
  • Number
  • Readable from font size 36, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] Really awesome font, but this one is probably not readable for “normal” viewer. But it’s freaking awesome!.

#4. Whoa!

Whoa! by Johan Waldenstrm
http://www.dafont.com/whoa.font

Whoa!

  • Only upper case.
  • Limited special characters (!*?).
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 18, the bigger the better readable, headline font

[mck] Wow!

#3. Tagster

Tagster by SDFonts
http://www.dafont.com/tagster.font

Tagster

  • Only upper case.
  • Limited special characters (!*?;:”‘)
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 24, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] Could easily have been number 2, but it’s not complete.

#2. IllegalEdding

Illegal Edding by Maurice van de Stouwe
http://www.dafont.com/illegal-edding.font

IllegalEdding

  • Only upper case. Special characters
  • Number
  • Readable from font size 18, good for body text and header

[mck] And from now a graphic designer should use this font. Love this one! And it has a complete font set

#1. PhillySans

Philly Sans by Kosal Sen
http://www.dafont.com/philly-sans.font

  • Write in lower case, but the effect is uppercase (no upper case, lower is upper case)
  • No Numbers
  • no special character
  • Readable from font size 18, good for body text and header

[mck] Very clean, readable, and still it has a graffiti vibe. It shouldn’t have been number 1 because it has a very limited character set, but I love this font.

Piece fonts

A “piece” is a more elaborate representation of the artist’s name, incorporating more stylized “block” or “bubble” letters, using three or more colors. This of course is done at the expense of timeliness and increases the likelihood of the artist getting caught.
…..
These pieces are often harder to read by non-graffiti artists as the letters merge into one another in an often undecipherable manner.

source wikipedia

If you need to make a piece in a design, you can also use the tag fonts, but never the other way around!

#6. Throw-up Font

Throw-up Font by Graffilia Fetn
http://www.dafont.com/throw-up-font.font

Throw-up Font

  • Only upper case
  • No special characters (except !)
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 36, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] This list wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t have a throw-up font. I’m having trouble reading it.:(

#5. Cancontrol

Cancontrol by Johan Waldenstrm
http://www.dafont.com/dht.font

Cancontrol

  • Only upper case.
  • No special characters (except !).
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 36, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] Nice one

#4. Aerosol

Aerosol by Bright Ideas
http://www.dafont.com/aerosol.font

Aerosol

  • Only upper case
  • Special characters
  • Number
  • Readable from font size 24, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] This font is made to color in. Not my style, but very nice!

#3. Homeboy

Homeboy by Johan Waldenstrm
http://www.dafont.com/homeboy.font

Homeboy

  • Only upper case
  • No special characters (except !).
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 36, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] Nice one

#2. Zit Graffiti

Zit Graffiti by Olivier “Zitoune” D.
http://www.dafont.com/zit-graffiti.font

Searfont

  • Only upper case (there is a difference between upper and lower case: upper case is an outline character).
  • Limited special characters (!)
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 24, the bigger the better readable
  • headline fon

[mck] A oldskool graffiti font. Nice

#1. Bboy

B-Boy by Johan Waldenstrm
http://www.dafont.com/bboy.font

Bboy

  • Only upper case.
  • Limited special characters (!).
  • No Number
  • Readable from font size 24, the bigger the better readable
  • headline font

[mck] A very oldskool graffiti font, I like this one very much.

Update #1: I just read this post about
44 Free Stylish Graffiti Fonts for Designers on NaldzGraphics. It’s a big list of free graffiti fonts: the same comments that I mentioned earlier goes for this list: it a list with all available free graffiti fonts out there…
Update #2: With a little help from google this popped up:
20 Free Graffiti Fonts You Should Already Have. I think a list with “Urban Hook-Ups”, “Detroit Ghetto” or “Raslani Underground” is not a list that is created with love…

At Over 30 free high quality graffiti fonts I found one that is worth looking into: “KZ Gravity”

I found my font at dafont.com, but there are some nice font to be found at deviantart.com which I need to do (some time :P)
This one tricked me into it:
Grafitti_Font_Beta_test_by_astayoga
Sadly the font is copy of the image you see here, and the sizes are to radical. would be awesome I think

Update #3: found another free graffiti font list: 50 Free Graffiti Fonts for Urban Artworks. The same applies to this is list what I mentioned before: it’s a list with a lot of fonts that range from good to very bad.
But in this list 3 fonts from deviantart.com (yes, I need to search there for some addition to my dafont list).
The first is Sprayerz Font by beraka
Sprayerz Font
and
KevoeWestFont by KevoeWest
KevoeWestFont
and
Crawn Fat by beraka
Crawn Fat

Categories
Custom Design Grumm Urban papercraft

Little Grummerboy – a Grumm custom by Hardy

I feel ashamed, and I should! This custom is laying around on my virtual desktop for a long time now.
And it’s really great!

I present: Little GrummerBoy a Grumm custom by Hardy
Little Grummerboy by Hardy, a Grumm Custom

Little GrummerBoy by Hardy Zip size 2.8MB 2195

The .ZIP file contains a .PDF
(You can use freeware like FilZip or 7zip to extract a .ZIP-file and read a .PDF with Acrobat or Foxit)

Little Grummerboy by Hardy, a Grumm Custom

So lets start introducing: Hardy a German graphic designer and allround creative.
You can visit Hardy on his own blog: thepaperjam.de, it’s in German so not readable for everyone 🙁 .
More into English? Perhaps you should visit him on myspace: Hardy has the most awesome myspace I have ever seen which is dedicated to his papertoy Bottecc.

Bottecc
You can download the Bottecc templates at the bottom of page, just search for “bottecc beta template”. (it’s a illustrator EPS, he should to change that to PDF… oh well!)

But that’s not all, Bottecc is a papertoy wrestler… Yes you heard it correct.. This papertoy can busta move:

As Hardy put it:

i started working on bottecc with the idea to make a papercraft that can really move and wrestle like the good old wwf-stars.

The subtitle of Hardy’s site is “Paper wrestling association“!
Too bad that the idea is not finished yet. I would love to send a Grumm into the ring 🙂
I don’t think there many papertoys out there that can beat Grumm 😀

Categories
Custom Design Grumm Urban papercraft

Grumm by Petra: Pink Grumm

Another Grumm custom: this time by my girlfriend…

Petra van Breugel designed a Grumm in her favorite color: pink. And that simple reason is also the base for it’s name: Pink Grumm 🙂

Pink Grumm by Petra van Breugel

I’ve been experimenting with Sketchup, but you can see that I not finished with the Grumm 3D model but it has not the same impact as an picture…
If you can send me a better picture, your picture/credits will be use instead!

Pink Grumm by Petra van Breugel Zip size 2.1MB 2002

The .ZIP file contains a .PDF
(You can use freeware like FilZip or 7zip to extract a .ZIP-file and read a .PDF with Acrobat or Foxit)

Categories
Design Urban papercraft

Urban Paper: 25 Designer Toys to Cut Out and Build

It’s really going to happen: the book I’ve been blogging about, you can pre-order it at Amazon.

Urban Paper: 25 Designer Toys to Cut Out and Build
Urban Paper: 25 Designer Toys to Cut Out and Build

And if you need more convincing use google to find more.

For a lousy $13.59 (about 10.14 Euros) you get 25 papertoys from very talented designers. And a DVD with extra information.


Urban Paper the Movie from Studio N8 on Vimeo.

A video that will be going along side the book, Urban Paper, that was put together by Matt Hawkins (www.madhawkins.com) and released by HOW publications (howdesign.com) It’s scheduled for an April release.

Damn there are very talented people doing this stuff. I need to get better at it!!