Tag: PaperToys

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 πŸ™‚ ).

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 πŸ™‚

Categories
Design Urban papercraft

Shameless selfpromotion

Shameless plug of the book I’m in: Urban Paper

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 πŸ˜‰ …

Some other nice-to—know 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. πŸ™‚
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 πŸ™ .
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 πŸ™‚
I don’t think there many papertoys out there that can beat Grumm πŸ˜€

Categories
Custom Design Drukk Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft: Marshall Alexander

There are really some great dutch papertoy designers, and Marshall Alexander is one of them!

Limi-Ted

Marshall Alexander is, like me, one of the designers that are invited to contribute to the book made by Matt Hawkins (read more) and proud and active member of Nice Paper Toys!

Marshall is one of the most modest people that I know, but I don’t have to be….
He thought that he needed some practice, so before he launched his own papertoy series (Foldskool heroes) he created a series of custom:
A Hedkase by NiceBunny:
Om mani
A SIZZA by Nick Knite:
Supa-catcha-Sizza1
A Speakerdog by Ben the Illustrator
Bark to the Future Speakerdog

And some of his own papermodels:
toxicmyk
Retrobot

And after that I found his thing: the one piece papertoy…
I like this one very much:projectfatchunk
projectfatchunk
and it’s on a postcard!!!

And then he decided that he had practiced enough: and started with the amazing Foldskool heroes series:
Foldskool series 1
I must confess that I didn’t took the time to download the Foldskool template when Marshall published it…. But when I did, I wanted to create one: the template is really very smartly constructed.

Foldskool series 2

A little quote from Marshall’s site:

… aiming to make money doing what I liked to do best: graphic design and illustration. So currently I work as a graphic designer at a small company in The Netherlands and spend my spare time illustrating my childhood memories and designing papertoys. Enjoy!

I’m glad that I’m created a beautiful Foldskool heroes Batmobile, because his reaction was Nukk:
Marshall did a Drukk-custom, which I really love:
Nukk a Marshall Alexander custom
Nukk is really the bomb.

slideshow
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!!

Categories
Custom Design Urban papercraft

Foldskool Heroes: Batmobile

Marshall Alexander is, like me, one of the designers that are invited to contribute to the book made by Matt Hawkins (read more).

Batmobile Foldskool Promo
Batmobile Foldskool Promo

But why haven’t I written about him before? Well, Marshall didn’t have a blank template to customize!
When I started a forum topic on NicePaperToys about my todo-list Marshall wasn’t even on that list!

But Marshall decided that he had practiced enough and published 3 models in the Foldskool series.
I didn’t have the time to build or customize it at that time, but later I downloaded a template and was amazed at the skills used to create this template (it in one piece). And I needed to create a custom for this beautiful piece of paper-art!!

Perhaps the correct order would be, to first write something about Marshall, and then post the custom that I did, but what the heck. I have created a Foldskool Hero: and my Foldskool hero is the Batmobile. And customizing is more fun when you can do something extra with the model…

Batmobile Foldskool Heroes
Batmobile Foldskool Heroes

I have modified the model a little and added some extra parts…. You still can make the model in one piece, but then the tires are very slim πŸ™‚

Foldskool Batmobile by [mck] Zip size 0.9MB 5710

(Marshall had no objections with putting a download link on my page, and I’m a sucker for statistics πŸ™‚ )
(The .ZIP file (use freeware like FilZip or 7zip to extract a >ZIP) contains a .PDF (which you can read with Acrobat or Foxit ))

The artist series is small, but with some great designers:

“Cenobox Pin Cushion” created by Jason Harlan
and

“Yebomaycu” created by Marko Zubak
and me:

Batmobile Foldskool Promo
Batmobile Foldskool Promo

Stay up-to-date, and visit Marshall Alexanders Foldskool Heroes customs page

Hope you like the design: don’t like it, leave a comment, like it, leave a comment …

Categories
AS3 Custmm Grumm Grumm Urban papercraft

Custmm Grumm – The project

This will be my most ambitious project in my spare time: Custmm Grumm!

Custmm Grumm

What is Custmm Grumm?

When I created Grumm, I had no plans with the moody fellow. But after I got invited to participate in a book about papertoys I started to think about the future of papertoys (and Grumm).

Two of those thoughts about the future is the base of this project: you should be able to modify/create a papermodel without expensive software or specialized knowledge.

Papertoys are, more then vinyl toys, difficult to customize. You need knowledge of image or vector programs link Photoshop or Illustrator. Besides the knowledge of these programs, you also need the program them selfs, which is not cheap. Another bump in customizing is the flat version of the model: the simple papertoys are not that difficult to understand, but the more complex models with more parts, it’s difficult to know which part goes where and how it will look.
It would be nice that you could create a custom skin and modify the model yourself.

Creating a custom skin for a model is done before: papercritters but modifying the model to isn’t.

I will try to make Custmm Grumm in Flash (AS3) so that it’s possible to create a custom skin and modify the model (with some restrictions of course)…

I had a discussion about this project on Nice Paper Toys if you want to know some more about the rocky start of this project.

Categories
Design Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft: Jerom

One of the artist in the PaperToy book created by Matt Hawkins is Jerom.

Jerom is a French artist, which makes it very hard for me to follow his blog: it’s in French which I don’t speak….
But Google is nice to help me a little: translate Jerom’s blog.

Jerom uses his blog not only for papercraft (as I do: Flash and Papertoys), so here a link to separate the paperToy on the blog from the rest: papertoy.

Oke but why am I writing about Jerom? I “promised” to feature all the participating artists of the book by Matt Hawkins on my blog! But Jerom is also part of the Nice Paper Toys social network where I also can be found.

The first time I saw work from Jerom I noticed that the template he created where very simple, with cool designs.
For example:


But recently he started a experiment with Google Sketchup and Pepakura (read my tutorial about creating papermodels with these 2) which are very cool.

Technical I’m cheating: there are no download templates, or blank templates of these models (at the time of writing this post), but I’m guessing that there will be (in the nearby future).

There are 3 models which can be found here (or read the Nice Paper Toys post from Jerom).

And I’m only showing the coolest:
Diabolito
diabolito

Just check the rest on Jerom’s blog