Blogger's Choice Awards

We'll it's that time of the year where awards are given to the good, the bad, and just plain old weird blogs. There is the sort of like a peoples' choice blogger awards being held at the Postiecon event in Orlando, Florida on June 2, 2007, in which the blogosphere can vote for their favorite and least favorite blog sites. If you're a competitive individual that likes to compare ranks and ratings with your friends or even othe peoples blogs, then this is just the thing for you. Just make sure that you have a ton of traffic on your site and also a very supportive base wouldn't hurt. One of our readers just emailed me and mentioned that she nominated yours truly for the "Best Educational Blog" category (made me laugh:) well, thanks, I guess, I don't know about "educational" because most of the things I talk about you probably knew it already. I've looked at the categories but I can't seem to put a finger on where I fall - well maybe Paperkraft is unique and there's no word to describe us. So go visit the site, check it out a bit, if you see a category that fits one of your favorite or your very own blog, go for it, you never know - you might just win. You can also cast votes for others that have already been nominated. This contest is sponsored by Payperpost.

Book Recommendation - Papercraft Zoo

You've probably seen most of the cute papercraft models featured here like this Corgi, or this giraffe, and even this other dog, they were all created by Kei Goto from the revered KeiCraft Papercaft Studio in Japan. We seldomly see this finely crafted and simplistic style of papercrafts here in the US, and rarely do they sell these on the popular online bookstores - unless you go look for it on some specialty store and wouldn't mind paying extra on oversees shipping. So when I found out that Kei's bestselling book, "Papercraft Zoo", has been made available again here in the US through Amazon.com, I've decided to personally recommend this and insist that beginners and collector's alike should not miss this one and buy a copy of it while it's available locally. The papercrafts on this book are easy to assemble and the price is very much affordable. Follow the link on the bottom of this post to go directly to it's Amazon page.

Papercraft Zoo [via Amazon]

Jesus Christ - Easter Papercraft

Easter is one of the most important holiday for the Christian faith, it is a celebration of the resurrection of the their savior Jesus Christ from the dead after His death by crucifixion. It's observed in the months of March, April, or May each year which approximately coincides with the first full moon after the vernal equinox. Here is a Jesus Christ papercraft model from Yozo Kutsushima of the Happy Origami Ministry in Tokyo, Japan. This paper model is also a paper automata in which its head can move around. We've also got some other cute Easter related papercrafts like this Easter Bunny and Easter Egg that you might want to check out.

Jesus Christ Easter Papercraft [Happy Origami Ministry]

Easter Bunny Papercraft [Related Posts]
Easter Egg Papercraft

Paper Float - Neputa Festival

Neputa originates from a mixture of ancient customs based on an old Japanese legend about two stars that meet in the sky once a year. As time has passed, the festival has become more and more beautiful and entertaining, and now includes traditional taiko drumming and huge paper lanterns on wheels, called ote. On the evenings the ote are pulled through the streets of Hanawa, followed by drums, flutes and children with small lanterns. On the last night of the festival, they are lined up on a bridge, set on fire and floated down the river. Impressive.

Paper vs. Paper

The Nightmare Before Christmas, Chicken Run, Corpse Bride, Wallace and Gromit, and Robot Chicken these are some of the popular movies and shows that used stop-motion process to animate their characters to life. Stop-motion is a film process whereby a single frame of an object is shot, the object is moved slightly, and then another frame is shot. When the frames run continuously it creates an illusion of fluidity in the motion of the object being filmed and they appear to move by themselves. Here's "Extra Strong", a stop-motion short film created by Giovanni Braggio, Lorenzo Latrofa, and Fabio Santomauro (Italians) featuring some paper on paper action.

AIBO Papercraft

" AIBO (Artificial Intelligence roBOt, also means "love" or "attachment" in Japanese, can also mean "partner") is one of several types of robotic pets designed and manufactured by Sony; there have been several different models since their introduction in 1999. Able to walk, "see" its environment via camera, and recognize spoken commands, they are considered to be autonomous robots, since they are able to learn and mature based on external stimuli from their owner or environment, or from other AIBOs. Artist Hajime Sorayama created the initial designs for the AIBO. "

Source : Wikipedia

Sony has discontinued the manufacturing of Aibo as of March 07 but you can have your own paper AIBO at home with this papercraft model from Robosquare. This papercraft consists of 2 pages to cut-out and a page of instructions. The website and instructions for this papercraft is in Japanese but the graphics are very straight forward so you wont have any trouble constructing it.

AIBO is available in Black or White papercraft models in PDF format and the finished model measures around 3.5" tall and 4.5" wide. You can also find previous Robosquare posts here (PINO) and here (ifbot).

White AIBO Robot Papercraft
Black AIBO Robot Papercraft

Prison Break Origami Crane

So today is the Prison Break Season 2 Finale and fans all over the US are eagerly awaiting how this season is going to end - as with all season finales, this is going to be good and also leaves you a lot of questions to ponder upon for this summer while you wait for the next one. For those who don't know or don't watch this show, Prison Break is an American television series from the Fox Network and the story is about a man who was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit and his brother's elaborate plan to help him escape his death sentence. One of the prominent scenes in Prison Break is Michael Scofield's (Wentworth Miller) use of an origami crane/swan to hide cryptic messages and codes for his cohorts, and when paper is involved you know were going to feature it. Another thing is that this origami pattern is the "official" one that Fox released to the public, but when I displayed the crane in my office, my boss (who's addicted to it) told me that it didn't look like the one they used on the show, she said mine looked to simple. So I decided to review some of the tapes and what do you know, she was right - it's not the same. But nonetheless, here's the "Official" Prison Break Origami pattern from Fox.

Prison Break Origami Crane [Download]
Photos [Flickr]
Video thumbnails courtesy [Fox.com]

Legend of Zelda Papercraft - Wind Waker Link

We've posted the Four Sword Link before and a lot of you requested the "other" papercraft version from Chokipeta.jp, well here it is - one of the most requested and sought after papercraft model on the net (well it's not quite exactly the real thing, but close enough) from the Zelda Wind Waker papercraft collection, we present this (*cough*) rough version of the Link papercraft model in all its glory. The pattern for this model was sent to me through email yesterday and the sender didn't really leave that much info. on who made it, well if your reading this (sender), thank you very much and keep up the good work. To the readers, don't get discouraged the first time you see the pattern, as I've mentioned above, it's quite rough - my guess is that this pattern was made by blowing/magnifying the floating thumbnail pic of the original pattern and then doing some Photoshop or Illustrator action on it. For the newbs, if you need a guide on assembling it, check out the pics that I took on my Flickr page and hopefully that'll be able to guide you (I'm not saying mine is how it's suppose to be put together, but if it looks good enough then you probably did it right :) And NO, this is not an April Fool's Joke.

Legend of Zelda Papercraft - Wind Waker Link [via Mediafire]
Wind Waker Photos [Flickr]


Legend of Zelda Papercraft - Four Swords Link [Related Posts]
Legend of Zelda Papercraft - Four Swords Link - Red, Purple, and Blue