Author Archives: admin

2011-03

Sheep

What would the world be without sheep? A sad, desolate place, that’s what. And to contribute to the sheepness of our nice little universe, here is a paper sheep: And lo and behold, you can make your very own, just by downloading, printing, cutting and gluing the template below. Admittedly this sheep is not as […]

2011-03

Hippo

Here is company for the dog and the cow: A hippo. This is admittedly somewhat complicated to assemble. The head is curved, and getting the curvature right takes a little bit of patience. The rest of the model is very simple, but the head can give you, well, some headache. Here it is in a […]

Books: Roadside picnic

If you know this title, congratulations: You seem to be a true scifi geek. If not, don’t feel bad – it’s a rather obscure book by conventional literature standards. You may know the movie that’s based on Roadside picnic, though: Stalker. Still no luck? Ok, this will be a tough sale, but don’t let your mind miss an opportunity to be blown away.

What would happen if aliens visited earth? Now, we all know the stereotypes and Hollywood templates, but what would really happen? Well, it depends on how these aliens view us, what they want from us, why they came. Now imagine they didn’t want anything from us. Imagine that apparently they didn’t even take notice of our existence. That we are so far below their level that they just don’t care.

That is – in a nutshell – the premise of roadside picnic. As one scientist in the book puts it,

Picture a forest, a country road, a meadow. Cars drive off the country road into the meadow, a group of young people get out carrying bottles, baskets of food, transistor radios, and cameras. They light fires, pitch tents, turn on the music. In the morning they leave. The animals, birds, and insects that watched in horror through the long night creep out from their hiding places. And what do they see? Old spark plugs and old filters strewn around… Rags, burnt-out bulbs, and a monkey wrench left behind… And of course, the usual mess—apple cores, candy wrappers, charred remains of the campfire, cans, bottles, somebody’s handkerchief, somebody’s penknife, torn newspapers, coins, faded flowers picked in another meadow.

The alien visitation left behind six zones filled to the brim with artifacts and reality-defying phenomena. The aliens are nowhere to be seen, and it seems they have left as quickly as they came, after little more than a day. However, what remains is a mess of alien technology that is so far beyond human comprehension that its effects border on the supernatural.

The alien artifacts are by no means harmless, and they effectively render the zones uninhabitable and extremely difficult to navigate. The zones may even contain technology which might lead to global destruction or the extinction of the race. Therefore, access is tightly regulated and only careful scientific expeditions are allowed. At their edge, frontier societies appear comprised of scientists, venturers and the so-called stalkers. Stalkers are people who go into the forbidden zones on their own, against the law. They face great danger, both from law-enforcement and from the zones themselves. However, considering the nature of the artifacts that can be found in the zone, the reward is potentially boundless.

Now, as ‘hard scifi’ as the above sounds, Roadside Picnic is not about technology or aliens or laser weapons. It’s about us humans. The remains of the ‘picnic’ are so out of the ordinary that our only way to cope with them is to do business as usual. In the face of technology lightyears ahead of our own, it’s the same old games of greed, bickering, deception and betrayal. The alien artifacts are taken as found, as weapons, as energy sources, as toys, but any attempt to crack their secrets and learn the why and whereabout of the aliens are thwarted by intrigue and powerplay.

Wikipedia has a nice listing of the artifacts and phenomena encountered in the zone, and even knowing that these lists are figments of the authors’ imagination, they are thrilling enough to keep your mind busy. It’s very interesting how the inhabitants of the frontier city Harmont, for whom they are entirely real, react to them. Basically shrugging their shoulders, they accept them as new facts and integrate them into their daily business, trying to find ways to take advantage of them. No one seems to care about the deeper cosmological implications, or about the fate of humanity in general.

Roadside Picnic is a very pessmistic novel, which basically concludes that Homo sapiens will always stick with his behavioural programs designed for small hordes of cave-dwelling gather-hunterers. Even in the face of something so clearly superior and simultaneously threatening and promising as the visitors, people are still people. This could actually be quite funny, but the novel is very serious about it: In the end, we know nothing, and the fact that we know nothing is owned to our inability to transcend ourselves.

You can actually find the full text of Roadside Picnic online here, in Russian and English side by side.

Roadside Picnic has been written by two brothers, Arkady Natanovich Strugatsky and Boris Natanovich Strugatsky, who are actually quite famous in Russia and among scifi fans in the West. They are remarkable characters, and it’s worthwhile to look into other works by the Strugatsky brothers, as is a trip to their Wikipedia entry.

As I mentioned above, Roadside picnic has been turned into a beautiful and brilliant movie, Stalker, by Andrei Tarkovsky. It’s usually said to be ‘loosely based’ on the novel, which technically it is, but I think it’s an extremely faithful translation of the book’s atmosphere, human dilemma and fatalistic approach of the protagonist into film. So go watch it. Here is the IMDb entry (and don’t let the ridiculous movie poster put you off). Here is the DVD.

2011-03

Five friends

Playing with the fusion of Lego® and paper, I came across a nice way of improving the ubiquitous minifigures. A simple paper layout allows to quickly add new heads, featuring whatever design you come up with. Here is the result: The underlying design is quite simple and doesn’t require any glue. If you cut it […]

The Saddest Music in the World

Another movie by Guy Maddin, and equally nonconformist, fascinating, and beautiful as Careful. ‘The Saddest Music in the World’ is a very unique film, and as Careful, it comes with its very own, very unconventional visual language.

It’s the 30ies, shortly before the end of probhition, and everybody is drowning in the global depression. Lady Port-Huntly, the owner of a Canadian beer company from Winnipeg, knows how to seize the opportunity: As soon as the prohibition is gone, millions of American drinkers will return to beer. And what instills the thirst for alcoholics better than melancholy?

The conclusion is obvious: Muskeg beer starts a contest for ‘the saddest music in the world’. Hundreds of musicians from all over the world follow the call, and intend to ‘lay claim to the jewel-studded crown of frozen tears and 25 thousand dollars in prize money. That’s right, 25 thousand depression era dollars.’

However, we are particularly interested in the fate of two brothers, who – due to rather bizarre circumstances – represent the USA and Serbia respectively. While the contest is going on, and we see a variety of musical performances from folklore groups all over the world, it dawns on us that it’s all about – for the lack of a better word – love pentagon, involving the two brothers, their father, Lady Port-Huntly herself and Narcissa.

No use in explaining who Narcissa is – go see the movie. It’s complicated, but Maddin manages to show the simplicity behind the complex, the constants of human desires and trials. And when we are finally ready to suspend our disbelief, to see the sorrow of the protagonists behind the retro style filming, the hilarious stereotypes, he ramps up the parody factor to turn everything into a brilliant, albeit somewhat sarcastic, comedy.

The Saddest Music has been called a ‘musical’, but I think that’s not fair. To me, it is foremost a comedy, transcending a range of categories and styles to tell a simple story about egotism, personal battles, and love. It sure has music in it (duh!), but that music is merely setting the stage. In fact, Maddin ensures that the music is delivered in the least enjoyable – and hilariously comic – way: Two bands from different countries go head-to-head into the musical battle, playing their corny folklore tracks alternatingly and – as the battle nears its climax – simultaneously. Which nicely illustrates the pointlessness of competing for the saddest music in the world.

The winner of each round takes – must in fact take – a slide into a pool of beer. Depression era entertainment at its best. Well, we can be lucky that we can watch the spectacle from the safe distance of the new millenium, or so it seems… if you look closely enough, you will easily recognize the cruel and mindless misanthropic ‘entertainment’ that’s dished out by contemporary media.

The Saddest Music is also a jibe at Maddin’s home town Winnipeg, which, the introductory announcement for the contest states, is the ‘world capital of sorrow’. However, as with many artists in a love-hate relationship with their home town (or country, for that matter), it’s rather obvious that Maddin has a deep affection for Winnipeg and its melancholic and struggling 1930ies denizens.

Great praise deserves the cast: Lady Port-Huntly is played by Isabella Rossellini, and she does a great job conveying both the glamour and the tragedy of her character. The Lady, being an obscenely rich beer baroness admist the poverty of depression-Canada, has a bitter secret of her own. Due to a rather bizarre car accident involving above-mentioned father and son, she has lost both her legs. Now her dearest dream is to be able to walk again, a wish that seems to be fulfilled when she gets two artificial legs – made of glass and filled with Muskeg beer, no less.

If you feel uncomfortable at the thought of a legless woman delightedly praising the clean, sparkly beauty of her new, beer-filled glass legs, you are not the only one.

Ross McMillan plays one of the brothers, Roderick Kent, who has migrated to Serbia where he became ‘Gravillo the Great’. Gravillo is the prototype of the melancholic, a figure with multiple levels of tragedy woven into his life, so tragic in fact that it’s outrageously funny.

No one has seen Gravillo’s face, as he wears a veil ‘as black as night’ all the time, so as to express the ‘national sadness of Serbia’ over being the cause of the World War I. A clear parody of ‘the man in black’, Johnny Cash, Gravillo is mourning the 9 million dead of the war, but also his dead son, whose heart he always carries with him in a jar.

It’s these little details, executed perfectly by cast and photography, that make this movie so interesting. And make no mistake: The greatest thing about this movie is how entertaining and funny it is.

I tent to be somewhat nervous when a 2003 movie starts black and white, and stays that way almost entirely, with a few colored scenes thrown in. In this case, the effect is not the least bit annoying, and in fact the deliberately low quality of the visuals (mimicking the distorting and field-narrowing effects of early cinematographic techniques) adds to the already powerful atmosphere.

If you want to see an ‘artsy’ independent movie, but want to be thoroughly entertained at the same time, you cannot go wrong with the Saddest Music.

The Saddest Music in the World at the IMDb

Watch The Saddest Music at Amazon

Valentine vase

Here is a little something I did for Valentine’s day for my significant other: A paper vase and flower. The ‘vase’ is made from two pieces of paper, slid into each other, and the flower is a couple of cut-out petal shapes. Here are the parts: If you want to make this, here is the […]

At the movies: Careful

2011-03-06

‘Careful’ is set in a rural mountain village, ‘Tolzbad’. Tolzbad is under constant threat from avalanches, forcing the villagers to keep noise to a minimum. You would expect that growing up with such a burden would leave its mark in the souls of the villagers, and oh boy, it does.

Tolzbad’s inhabitants are perfect showcases of Freudian deviations. Whatever can go wrong in the microcosm of a family, it is bound to happen in Tolzbad. Keeping silent all the time, the villagers’ minds are crawling with suppressed desires, innuendoes, and dysfunctional family relations.

If you haven’t stumbled upon the Canadian director Guy Maddin, you better take a seat. Any of his films is a breathtaking experience, and entirely the opposite of Hollywood’s cookie cutter blockbusters. While such a verdict usually implies ‘difficult to watch’ – read: excrutiatingly boring to watch weirdness – ‘Careful’ is far from it.

In fact, it doesn’t get much more entertaining than this. ‘Careful’ delivers on multiple levels: The visuals are a perfect reenactement of – especially German – films from the silent movie era, copying the style of Fritz Lang and Leni Riefenstahl. They are very fitting to the clicheed Tolzbad, seemingly the protoype of a down-to-earth alpine village, where so much goes awry behind closed doors.

The story itself isn’t overly complicated or breathtaking, but it is delivered with so much punch and humor that it becomes a hillarious rollercoaster ride through the human subconciousness.

Careful is about the essence of cinema, storytelling that would not work without the visuals, a perfect amalgamation of image, sound and script. Absolutely watchable, absolutely recommended.

Careful at the Internet Movie Database.

Watch Careful at Amazon.

Papercraft toy: A cow

2011-02-27

Ok, this is funy: The post was originally titled ‘A cow named Sue’. I thought I’d give the cow a name, for the sake of reinforcing the anthropomorphization. Fast forward a couple of months later, I look at my web stats and more specifically the referrers. Turns out there were two Google searches for the term ‘a cow named sue’. Hm, strange, I think to myself – rather unlikely that somebody came across the post, vaguely remembers it and looks it up in Google under the exact title.

So I did the Google search myself. Surprise, the first hit is not my post, but rather a childrens’ book. As far as I can tell, I was completely unaware of its existence, let alone its title, but somehow it must have crept into my subconscious. The other explanation, that I randomly chose the same – rather randomly picked – name for my cow as Penny Wolf, the author of ‘A cow named Sue’, seems too improbable. Or maybe, there is an archetype hardwired into the human brain… I am sure if you dig deep enough, some Phoenecian god of fertility with a bovine head had a name phonetically vaguely similar to ‘Sue’. Oh well…

Anyway, the cow formerly known as Sue is a happy cow. She really is. She may look a bit wideeyed and startled, but she is completely happy. Trust me.

Here she is standing on her template sheet:

Turn around:

Good girl!

As you can see, I messed up when I constructed the model – I got some water on her face, blotting the inkjet ink. Feel free to do better…

And here is the template (see also instructions here):

T-shirts for minifigures

2011-02-23

If you haven’t already stumbled upon it, Muji and Lego found a great way of combining paper and Lego® bricks. For any Lego® afficionado, that is exciting news in and of itself. However, I think that this idea can be expanded some more. If we combine Lego®-compatible punches in sheets of paper with a cutting plotter such as the Craft Robo, a whole new world of Lego® paper toy hybrids can be created.

In fact, what Lego® bricks lack – detailed illustration, ornaments and bling – can now be printed on a sheet of paper and added effortlessly. When you look at the Lego® evolution over the past 50 years, it’s clear that there is always a slight friction between the inherent abstraction in a Lego® brick and children’s love for detail. To some extent, paper can bridge that gap if it can be easily applied. All it takes are punches in the shape and size of Lego® stubs.

As a first foray into this area, I present a template for a ‘t-shirt’ for minifigures:

This is how it looks in real life, ready to be applied:

The central hole is for the ‘neck’, the four octagonal holes are for the leg stubs. This fits nicely over the torso of a minifigure, like so:

It’s automatically held in place by the ‘neck’ and the protrusions from the legs. So no adhesives (I hate stickers on Lego). By printing art onto the trapezoid front and back, you can design your own minifigure tees. Just take a look:

Here is the template:

LEGO^® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this site

Lego Group’s fair play

Among other things, this site contains templates that can be used in conjunction with Lego® toys. The Lego Group is rightfully protective of their trademarks, and for anyone providing stuff related to Lego® bricks, it’s a good idea to follow their fair play rules. I usually despise all documents in legalese and am very easily annoyed by overzealous corporations, but in this case I have to say that the Lego Group did a good job in making their point clear, helping fans to play along, and to keep things very reasonable.

Since I require it for all posts related to Lego® bricks, I will here copy their suggested disclaimer:

“LEGO^® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse this site”

Paper Panda

2011-02-21

Who wouldn’t agree that pandas are the most adorable of all huge, vicious animals capable of killing man with one stroke of their paw? Well, and exactly for this reason I have created a panda paper model.

This model features a number of rounded shapes, and therefore is actually quite tricky to assemble. It takes some patience to create a clean version, and unfortunately you can tell from the images that I just don’t have that kind of patience.

If you achieve a better quality, I’d be pleased to see photos and put them up here. The model sure has some potential, and I’d love to see it shine.

Here is the PDF template.

Printing and cutting the templates of this site

2011-02-20

This site features several models which can be printed and cut. You have three options:

Print a model, then cut it manually
Print a model, then cut it using Craft Robo
Import the artwork and cutting outline into a software for whatever cutting plotter you use, and proceed as required.

Option 1 is self-explanatory, for option 3 you are on your own, and for option 2 I do have further instructions here:

The templates come in two parts. Download the PDF and the GSD file. The PDF contains the artwork, the GSD contains the cutting instruction for the Craft Robo.

Print out the PDF onto a 190g crafting paper. Load the paper into the Craft Robo, then load the GSD into Robo Master and start cutting.

Using the SVG files

SVG is a universal file format understood by many vector graphics applications. One of the most popular open-source vector editors is Inkscape. In addition to the actual artwork, the SVG file contains green and magenta lines. Green lines are supposed to be cut, magenta lines are folds (which should be cut as a dashed line, preferably using an alternating pattern of 1.2mm cut and 1.2mm non-cut).

Using the Corel Draw files

The Corel Draw files are actually the easiest to use. They contain everything you need in order to print and cut a model. Just print the page after loading a file, then cut it using the Corel Draw macros that came with the Craft Robo software (the menu item “Cut/Plot Craft Robo” under the button “Launch application” in the tool bar (the icon looks like the Corel logo with a dropdown arrow).

The “Cut/Plot” dialog will open. Make sure you check “use registration marks”. Also, select “By layer”, then uncheck the “Art” layer. Check the “Fold” and “Cut” layers. Check “Enable driver options”, uncheck “single setting for all”. Select the appropriate paper for both layers (Index 90lbs works for me, using 190g paper). For the “Fold” layer, select line type “Custom 1”, for the “Cut” layer line type 1.

Edit line type “Custom 1”, and enter “0.120 cm” for ‘a’, “0.120 cm” for ‘b’. This will produce dashed lines for the folds. Depending on your paper type and thickness, you may want to set the “Cut” layer to two or more passes instead of just one.

Converting CorelDraw to GSD files

2011-02-19

Craft Robo’s aptly named control software Robo Master uses a proprietary file format ‘GSD’. I work with CorelDraw, and while CDR is perfect for cutting directly (and in my opinion much better suited for complex Craft Robo projects than Robo Master), there is no way around the GSD format if you want to pass on designs to other people.

The way I do the conversion is as follows:

First, I split the art to be printed and the cutting outlines. The art to be printed goes into a PDF file, and the cutting outlines into a GSD. The reason behind this is that complex artwork does not convert correctly to GSD – only very simple shapes do.

Now, in order for this to work we need to make sure that the registration marks are included in the PDF and that they align with the registration marks used by Robo Master.

I have prepared a Corel Draw file with registration marks at the exact same positions as the default positions in Robo Master.

Using this file, these are the steps I follow:

Position the artwork and cutting outlines inside the registration marks
Move the cutting outlines to an invisible layer or delete them temporarily
Export the document as a PDF
Make the cutting outlines visible again or restore them. Delete everything else (make sure that the cutting outlines are ungrouped and are all in a single layer. This should be the only layer in the document)
Due to a bizarre behaviour of Robo Master, where imported DXF files have their center at the lower left corner of the page, we need to add an offset to the outlines. Go to ‘Arrange-> Transformation -> Position’, and enter 148.5 and 105 mm (half the page size for an A4 page). I have prepared a macro included in the template mentioned above you can use for that: Go to “Tools -> Visual Basic -> Play” and select RecordedMacros.dxfoffset
Now go to “File -> Save as…”, select as file type ‘DXF – AutoCAD’
In the AutoCAD export window, select “AutoCAD R13” as the export version, and select “Millimeters” as the export unit.
Open Robo Master, go to “File -> Load DXF…”
Save the file as a GSD file.

2011-02

Variation on a theme: Jan...

Variation on a theme: Janus dog

As you may or may not know, Janus was the two-faced Roman god responsible for doors, gateway, beginnings, endings – anything transition. One face would look back, and the other into the future. Whooo – the symbolism! Now, for the first time in history, man’s best friend and this mind-blowing concept of ambivalence have been […]

So I hear you want to make a dog

Well, you’ve sure come to the right place. Here is a dog you can make quickly from a sheet of paper. It’s bipedal. though, so technically it’s more a dog deity than a mere mortal dog. But hey, what’s not to like about man’s best friend taking the next evolutionary step?

Ok, this puppy is easy to assemble. Just download the template, print it out (I recommend sturdy >190g/sqm paper), and cut out the three parts. Preferrably with a sharp knife – think Xacto. Then glue them together, following the letter-code hints on the flaps.

Here is what you will get once you have cut out all three parts. These are already roughly folded into their final shape, and now need to be assembled using some glue.

Since this is made of paper and is hollow, it tends to fall over easily. To fix this, I recommend adding a weight to the base. This can be a small coin, like so:

It’s a good idea to glue the weight to the base and in addition secure it with a piece of tape:

Trust me, experience has shown that the weight gets loose all too easily, and turns your dog into a rattle where the coin bounces around inside the hollow base. Which would not be so bad, but it defeats the purpose of the weight, and a bipedal dog falling flat on its face all the time is, well, a bit sad.

Here is a close-up of our doggy:

And here is the template (see also instructions here):

Paper weight and measurements

2011-02-17

Ok, so this is one more thing where the shadow world government has failed miserably: Paper weight (technically, grammage) and dimension units, or – even worse – paper size standards. There is the big divide between continental Europe and the British empire, including its overseas colonies, but then there is also a whole mess of local customs, regional deviations, and odd preferences.

It seems nobody can agree on what size paper should come in, and how to measure its dimensions. Luckily, here is a convenient table for everything, and here is the Wikipedia article on the same topic.

Most projects described on this website will be based on190g-300g DIN A4 paper, which corresponds to 53 -82 lb bond/ledger and 8.27″ x 11.69″. Using US letter format should be fine, but you should slightly scale the templates to fit on the page before printing. If you are unsure about the grammage, just use sturdy carton which is still flexible and thin enough to be easily cut and folded.

If you use a Craft Robo, you have probably already found the thickest paper you can still cut through, and that should work fine for the projects on this site. If you are unsure about what the Craft Robo can digest, I suggest that you do some quick experiments. Note that there is a huge difference between a sharp new blade and a blade that has cut through a couple of dozen sheets already, so try to use a fresh blade.