Tag Archives: model

#132

2015-11

Christmas robots advent c...

Christmas robots advent calendar

Everyone loves robots, right? The nice robots of the good old days, of course, not some shape-shifting terminator bent on the destruction of mankind. So since Christmas is drawing near, for those of you who can’t wait, here is a vintage robot advent calendar. You can buy the whole set, but there are also three […]

#127

2015-10

Halloween Cat

Just in time for Halloween, here is a little skeleton kitty. This one is not difficult to build, so have a go and let the ghost cat gaze deep into your soul.

#121

2015-06

For kids: Spaceship

Kid-friendly papercraft: Spaceship

Many papercraft printables are not accessible to younger children – they require motor skills that only come with age. At the same time, papercrafts are a perfect pastime for young children: They teach important construction and manual skills in a playful way, let children learn about shapes and geometry, and they provide a lot of space […]

3D printed airplane miniature

2015-04-13

This was an experiment: I wanted to see how well Shapeway’s stainless steel prints turn out, especially for tiny details. For a test, I picked a model of the Lockheed Model 10 Electra – the airplane Amelia Earheart flew on her last flight.

I will be showing some paper airplane models at the Aero Expo starting on Wednesday, April 14, and I thought it would be nice to bring along a 3D printed steel model as well.

I had made a paper model of a similar Lockheed airplane before, and after tinkering with the schematics a little bit (more on this in a future tutorial), I had a 3D model that was fit for printing.

Turns out, Shapeway managed to produce a very nice print. This is not plastic, but stainless steel. It’s bronze-infused, meaning it has an almost golden sheen to it.

As far as I know, Shapeways uses a sintering process to print these, so there is no need for support material, and thus no visible attachment points. Being used to working with plastics, the weight of a stainless steel model feels great, too.

The details turned out very nice. I was concerned with the propeller blades, as they are very small and thin, but they printed nicely and don’t feel like they will break off easily.

So, all in all I would consider this a success, except maybe for the price, which is not horrible, but not insignificant either – after all, this is a very small model (about 5cm long). Nevertheless, if you want to have one, too, you can order it from Shapeways. Mine took about one week for printing and shipping.

#119

2015-01

Miniature paper airplane:...

Miniature paper airplane: Hercules C-130

Here is another miniature airplane, the Lockheed Hercules C-130: The C-130 is a versatile transport aircraft. It was designed to be able to use unprepared runways. Due to its robustness and versatility, it is used in more than 40 variants all over the world. The aircraft has remained in continuous production for more […]

#117

2014-12

Dino calendar 2015 editio...

Dino calendar 2015 edition

Upon popular request, I have updated the original dino calendar for the year 2015. Not only that, but I have created a new violet variant for the new year. You can find the new template below, as well as templates for weekly and monthly cards. The original, green, dino can be found here, and there is […]

#95

2013-12

Flower gun

A nice little paper toy gun, marrying peaceful hippie style to the lethal force of frontloaded 17th century muskets.

#87

2012-09

Peacock penholder

I admit this is “somewhat” kitschy, but it can still make for a nice little gift for children, if you want to give them a set of pencils or felt-tip pens (kids love kitsch). It’s a peacock pen-holder: In case you wonder what the golden scribbles mean, and if they maybe are the next Voynich […]

#58

2012-04

Scientist dino

Nothing to see here, just a dinosaur doing science. His biggest weakness? Meteorites and volcanism. His biggest strength? The theory of evolution. He’s a strong believer in white labcoats and safety goggles. Here is the PDF template.

#29

2012-01

Toucan

This is a small cardboard toucan: It can sit on the corner of, say, your NEC monitor. In order to make that work, you have to glue a small weight such as a coin to the inside of the feet, like so: This will give enough balance to keep the bird safely atop of any […]

#27

2011-12

Three finger doll animals

Now that I have featured the fox, the crow and the bear finger dolls, I wanted to show you all three together. All three being forest beasts, they go together quite well, the cheeky crow, the sly fox and the relaxed bear. These are extremely easy to make, and should be doable for kids at […]

#26

2011-12

Finger doll crow

When it comes to finger dolls, it seems I have a slight bias for northern European forest beasts. Here is a crow: This one goes well with the fox and the bear. Here is the template as a PDF file.

#25

2011-12

Finger doll fox

Following the finger doll bear, here is his good friend the fox: Again, very simple to build, definitely worthwile as a beginner’s project. And here is the PDF template.

#24

2011-12

Finger doll bear

As social creatures, we have the amazing ability to project a soul into virtually anything that has two eyes and a mouth. This opens up a world of possibilities when it comes to dolls. And sometimes the simplest dolls are the most loved ones. So I set out to create a couple of papercrafted […]

#19

2011-11

Papercraft biggy pank ...

Papercraft biggy pank – map edition

Turns out the piggy bank template is quite versatile.Here is a Manhattan map edition: The map is from the OpenStreetMap project. Here is the PDF template.

#18

2011-11

Papercraft piggy bank ...

Papercraft piggy bank – wood edition

I’ve made a nice little template for a papercraft piggy bank. Exactly the right thing if you want to save up for a special occasion. Or to wrap up a monetary gift. It’s admittedly rather light, being made of paper and such. So to give it more weight, at least visually, I wrapped it in […]

#17

2011-11

Office rat

Meet Randy the office rat. He’s a pretty nice guy – if you know him better. In fact, Randy’s the coworker of your dreams. If you dream of coworkers like Randy, that is. And the best thing about Randy? It just so happens you can build him yourself. Here is the template in PDF format.

#13

2011-07

Chameleon

Don’t ask me how it came to pass, but I decided to make a papercraft chameleon. After some tweaking of the color scheme, I settled for a classical B/W and red combination. The daughter dismissed it as a toy, lacking the cuddly factor. So I had to reluctantly move it over to the decorative […]

#12

2011-05

I give you Portal 2’...

I give you Portal 2’s Frankenturret in paper

Hello, test subjects – Cave Johnson here. I give you – a paper model of the Portal 2 Frankenturret. It’s somewhat finnicky to assemble, I admit that, but it will be the best Frankenturret your desk has seen in a while, I assure you. You may want to build more than one, though, as they […]

#11

2011-04

The gentleman dinosaur

May I introduce you to the gentleman dinosaur: He is as distinguished as he is obsolete. That’s the way things go these days. If you want to assemble him, here is the template (see also instructions here): Corel Draw PDF PDF + GSD (Craft Robo) SVG

#10

2011-04

A velociraptor named Herb...

A velociraptor named Herbie

Most of you will be too young to remember Herbie, the sentient Volkswagen Beetle created by Disney in more innocent times. Speaking of innocence, here is a slightly more dangerous version: I give you – the Herbieraptor.

2011-04

Velociraptor bride is out...

Velociraptor bride is out to kill Bill

Aren’t you tired of the run-of-the-mill tame velociraptor? Well, here is a deadly variety – and it’s a lady. She has been wronged, and is now on a rampage to set things straight. How more deadly can it get? And she is armed, as well. With a Hattori Hanzo sword, no less: About time for […]

2011-04

Velociraptors at the race...

Velociraptors at the races

They are called velociraptors for a reason – these guys are fast: And they are dressed to – no, not to kill, but to race. With their primary colors and fancy racing stripes, these guys are the envy of fashionistas all over the world. It’s not getting any more hipsteriffic. And here is the good […]

Paper model of the Reddit logo

2011-04-09

This is my stab at a paper model of the Reddit logo. The rounded shapes of the logo do not lend themselves well to papercrafting, and so a paper model will either be very complicated to assemble or inaccurate. I took the easy road and made a rough approximation, which only looks good from the front. Well, at least it’s relatively easy to assemble.

If you want something more refined, look here.

Here is a glimpse at the not so elegant backbone structure:

And here are the parts:

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

For Corel Draw: reddit_paper_model.cdr
As PDF: reddit_paper_model.pdf
For Craft Robo: GSD + PDF
As SVG (e.g. for Inkscape): reddit_paper_model.svg

Assembly should be easy: First, glue the large strip into a cylinder – this will be the “body”. The body, head, and feet are connected by sliding them into assembly slots cut into the opposing part. The head has two strips which interconnect via the same slots. They form an ‘X’ which can then be inserted into the slots in the body cylinder.

2011-04

Nuclear Boy and his diges...

Nuclear Boy and his digestively impaired posse

Most of you will by now have seen the video of Nuclear Boy and his tummy problems. The media artist Kazuhiko Hachyia and the community have created a simultaneously hilarious and touching PA-style film which explains in a child-friendly way what’s going on at Fukushima. Imagine the confusion and fear experienced by children in the […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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:

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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):