March 29, 2009

National Treasure Papercraft - Masonic Medallion

This is my papercraft rendition of a Masonic medallion that appears in the 2004 Disney movie, National Treasure. In the movie, American treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates follows a series of cryptic clues to find an ancient treasure whose history is intertwined with the history of both Freemasonry and the Knights Templar. In the movie trailer, the medallion can be glimpsed briefly first in the hand of Christopher Columbus and then later in the hand of one of the Knights Templar:
Having only two pieces, this 1:1 scale papercraft is embarrassingly simple, but it is sure to be appreciated by fans of the movie like myself. Special thanks once again to Indy Magnoli for his help with this model. Here is the full template information:

Scale: 1:1
Finished Size: 3.5" (8.9 cm) diameter
Number of sheets: 1
Number of parts: 2
Difficulty: 1/5
Download: Here

March 27, 2009

Mr. Bean's Mini Papercraft

Mr. Bean was a British Comedy television series popular in the early 90's. The show was characterized by oddball, slapstick humor which sometimes involved Mr. Bean's car, a 1977 Mark IV Mini. The Mark IV Mini should not be confused with the larger "New Mini" which is currently being produced by BMW who now owns the brand. This single piece papercraft (along with nine other Mini paper models) is offered by the Vancouver Mini Club of British Columbia, Canada at their website here. To be honest, I had some difficulties getting the model to fit together well, so if you decide make one for yourself be aware that some "nipping and tucking" of the template may be required for a good looking end result.

March 25, 2009

House of Chtulhu Papertoy

The last instruction on the template for this "House of Cthulhu" papertoy reads "Open the door a crack and stand back!" Designed by Jeffery Dixon to appear as if the mighty Cthulhu has squeezed himself into a tiny shack, building this toy was good creepy fun. The best part was it only about took ten minutes to put together. This papertoy was created in 2008 and is available for download here.

March 22, 2009

Retro Papercraft Batman Mask

Batman Bastelbogen Mask
Illustrator Katie Cook has created a papercraft mask that hearkens back to the Silver Age of Comic Books. The template for this 1960's style Batman cowl is one piece, one page and may be downloaded here. Katie is a talented artist who, among other things, works on Clone Wars webcomics for starwars.com. Hey Katie, how about a Captain America mask next? ;)

March 19, 2009

Marvel Papercraft - Blink's Quiver

I have been a fan of the Marvel Comics superhero Blink since she first appeared in X-Men Alpha in 1995. Blink has the ability to create teleportation portals. She can also channel her teleportation energy into small javelins which when thrown at a target cause the target to be teleported to another location. A supply of javelins is usually carried in a quiver on her back. This papercraft is my vision of Blink's quiver. Typically the javelins in her quiver are grey, but I chose to make the javelins in this model the more recognizable brilliant pink color the javelins take on when they are charged with Blink's energy. The papercraft template info is as follows:

Scale: 1:3
Finished Size: 7" (18 cm)
Number of sheets: 3
Number of parts: 16
Difficulty: 3/5
Download: Here

March 16, 2009

Business Card Origami - Orb Unit

I haven't come across too many origami pieces that make use of curves, so I found this "orb unit" very interesting. This piece was constructed using four business cards that are creased with partial circles and then locked together. If you would like to attempt to make a orb unit of your own, a copy of the crease pattern template is available here. The original creator of the orb template is reported to be Jeannine Mosely.

March 12, 2009

Micro Mini Cooper Papercraft

Last week at my place of work someone was building an 1:96 scale architectural model for a client. It was mentioned to me that it would be nice to have a model car to go with the building to give it a sense of scale. I was happy to oblige by making a papercraft car. ;) I started with a one piece Mini Cooper template I found here. I then printed the template on typing paper at 30% the original size to get it to 1:96 scale. The finished car's size is 1.5" (3.8 cm) long. I hope to do some other Mini Cooper builds in the future, only not as small as this one. :)

March 10, 2009

Paper Cthulhu Mask

If you ever need a quick Chthulhu mask, :) this may be just the thing for you. Print, cut out, and you are ready to go. The ever popular Chthulhu is a horrific cosmic being originally created by writer H. P. Lovecraft. This particular mask was created by artist David Galvan for Halloween 2007. Looking closely, it appears that the mask was created from photographs of actual tentacles and scales. Downloads of the mask in either jpg or pdf format are available here.

PS, A previous post of mine on Cthulhu papercraft can be found here. Be on the lookout for more in the future!

March 8, 2009

A Rommy Birthday

It has become something of a tradition at our house to make papercraft decorations for birthdays. This weekend we celebrated my wife's birthday and I decorated with a Rommy bunny paper toy. The Rommy series of paper toys are the creation of Japanese paper engineer Tetsuya Watabe. I chose Watabe's "Kiss, Kiss, Kiss" Rommy because it goes well with the secret pet name I have for my wife (don't tell, but it is the same as the name of a certain brand of carrots in the US). Want to know another secret? Most of the variations in the Rommy series are no longer available for download, however an archive of all the past designs may be found here.

March 6, 2009

Volkswagen Papercraft - New Beetle

VW Beetle Series, Part 7
This is the last installment in the seven part series on Volkswagen Beetles. All the previous Beetle photos I posted were of my own builds, but these photos came from the designer's website. To be honest, after building six other Beetles I was starting to get a little bored. :) So even though I haven't actually built this one I thought I would pass the information along. The template for this New Beetle is two pages with 70+ parts and is available in six different colors including blue, green, orange, red, white, and yellow. Downloads from Mamecraft are available
here.

March 4, 2009

Arcane Cube Papercrafts

Here are two identically sized (but unrelated) cube papercrafts. What these cubes have in common is that they are models of boxes with magical properties. On the left is a papercraft of the "Lament Configuration" from the Hellraiser movie series. The Lament Configuration is a puzzle box that when solved opens a portal to a Hell-like dimension. On the right is a "Horadric Cube" from the Diablo II video game. When certain items are placed inside the Horadric Cube they become transmuted into different items. The original creator of the Lament Configuration papercraft is unknown, but the original template plus several modified versions may be downloaded here. The Horadric Cube papercraft was created by DeviantART member "Supaslim", USA, 2009 and may be downloaded here.

March 2, 2009

Single Page Paper Dice Tower

When playing board games where rolling more than two dice is required, a dice tower comes in handy to keep the dice from ending up on the floor or scattering the game setup. In 2008 designer Russell Howell created a dice tower that can be printed on a single sheet of cardstock and assembled without glue. I used red cardstock for mine to add some color. The tower template may be downloaded here. An optional dice catcher tray extension to allow more dice to be rolled at once may be downloaded here. The green dice shown in the photo are special edition dice from the Heroscape gaming system.