Paper Craft for Beginners Video

I just finished doing a beginners video that demonstrates how paper models are done. This was shot with a web cam so pardon the quality. The original video was 1.4GB, then I compressed it to 64MB, and then another, that ended up at 19.4MB using the Xvid codec. That's the smallest size I can encode the video without compromising the quality too much. The paper model I used in this demo is the Kabuki Bear by Moichi.



Kabuki Bear - Download - http://www.boreas.dti.ne.jp/~moichi/

On the following days and weeks to come, I will also do instructional videos on other paper crafts and origami, so just stay tuned for that.

Before I begin explaining this video, please note that all of this notes are based on my personal experiences and that technique varies from person to person.

Part 1 - Cutting - This is really the simplest part but you should also be careful at the same time, try to look at the entirety of the model before you start cutting, note that I did not use the cutter for this project, In my experience in paper crafting I have seldomly used the cutter for cutting the outlines of the models, I mainly used narrow tip scissors for all of this. I do however use the cutters if there is something to be remove or cut from inside of the paper model and for very minute detailing. Once you have cut the paper models, its time to move on to. . .

Part 2 - Folding and Creasing - This part can either be really easy or really difficult depending on the paper model, there are three techniques that you should be familiar with when doing paper crafts, the mountain fold, valley fold, and tubulars. ( I will be doing a demo on this in my next video). When folding you should learn to use your power of observation and visualize at the same time to enable you to easily determine which part goes together.

Part 3 - Gluing and Assembling - After you've folded and creased the parts this is where visualization comes handy, once you've figured out how to put them together, start putting a small amount of glue on the glue tab. The best to determine if you've put the right amount of glue is when you press the glued surfaces and no glue comes out. After you've glued and assembled them together, relax, pat yourself in the back and enjoy your new paper craft model.

Tip: If your hand starts sweating, make sure you dry them real well before continuing, you don't want to smear the ink on your paper model.

Happy Hamster Papercraft

I've received quite a few emails regarding my first post - Tetsujin 28, that beginners are finding it very hard to complete. Well, starting today I'm going to try and post both beginners and advance paper models alike. Here's a cute paper craft hamster from Yo & Motoko's Home Page. This is a very basic model, so beginners would fine this very helpful.



Happy Hamster Papercraft - Download

Happy Valentine's Day Part Three

Today is really a lovely day, here's yet another set of pop-up cards for Valentine's Day. And we've got pop-up card designer Maria Victoria Garrido from Barcelona, Spain to thank for. The available Valentine cards for download are marked with a red asterisk on the left side of their title. Check out her complete works at:

http://marivi_10.tripod.com/myhomenew.html



Valentine's Pop-up Cards

Happy Valentine's Day Papercraft Part Two

A second batch of paper model cutsies just in time for Valentine's Day, from Flying-Pig.com and Paper Museum by Sanwa Supply Co. from Japan.


Snap-up Heart
Valentine's Boxes

Happy Valentine's Day Papercraft

To all the romantics out there, here's a beautiful collection of Valentine's Day pop-up cards from Canon:


Pop-up card (Chocolate Cake)
Pop-up card (Heart Box)
Gift Box A
Gift Box B
Card

Compression Software Basics

I just received an email from one of our readers and she had problems opening the file she downloaded from the previous post about Klonoa, she said that the file is neither PDF nor PDO but LZH.

I'm going to to a brief discussion on this problem, the LZH file is not a different kind of paper craft pattern but instead it is a compression file and is also known as an archive file, what this means is that the provider of the paper craft pattern has used a compression software to compress the PDF file, they do this so that it would be easily downloaded or for those people who do not have a fast internet connection or simply those who use 56kb dial-up internet. The LZH compression file acts as a container that holds the PDF or PDO file and at the same time trimming down the overall size of the file. So, how do we open this file? Well, will get there in a minute.

First, I'll enumerate some compression/archive file extensions commonly used for paper craft patterns.

1. ZIP
2. RAR
3. LZH
   

There are a lot of file compression/archive formats out there but we can't discuss all of them since most of them are rarely used, instead we will focus our attention on the three formats that are widely used, but if you want to read about all of the different formats here's a helpful link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_archive_formats

Now, we go into opening this archives. The two most popular compression/archive software out there is Winzip, followed by WinRAR. This two do exactly the same thing, they compress, archive, and decompress files. The only difference is the way they do it, but were not going there since that is very technical and not really necessary. Winzip and WinRAR can open all of the popular archive formats (ZIP, RAR, LZH, etc...) but can cost you between $30 - $50.

Lucky for you I like free stuff, so here it is:

http://www.7-zip.org/download.html

7-zip is a free compression/archive software, owned and hosted by 7-zip.org, it can do whatever Winzip and WinRAR can do, and have I mentioned that it's FREE.

Klonoa Papercraft (including Moo)

It's a cold and lazy day today in Webster, and to get ourselves busy here's a paper model of Klonoa and Moo, if you are not familiar with that name/game, Klonoa is an anthropomorpic videogame character created by the Japanese game developer Namco, for the Sony Playstation video console back in 1998. For those of you who don't follow videogame history, Namco is also the creator of the very famous and successful franchise/videogame character, Pacman. As reference to this you can see a Pacman logo on the side of Klonoa's trademark blue-backwards cap.

The other character is Moo - he is one of the most common enemies you'll find in Klonoa the videogame, much like the ShyGuys and Goombas of the Mario Brothers franchise.



The paper model is easy to build, it took me about an hour to finish both of them. Klonoa is about 7 1/2" tall, and Moo is 4" tall. The files are in PDF format, hosted by Namco China and you can find them here:

Klonoa Papercraft [Namco-ch.net]