Author: Matthijs Kamstra

Categories
Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft: definition of Urban papercraft

I have written about Urban papercraft, but what is it? and when do I consider it “Urban papercraft”?

Lets look for the definition of Urban papercraft at the Wikipedia definition of Urban Vinyl.

Which can be used to define Urban papercraft:

  1. The design of the toys is mainly done by graffiti artists, musicians, DJs, illustrators, and comic-book artists
  2. Examples of the toy are designed by the creating artist
  3. And examples from other designers
  4. There is always a blank version so another artist can paint it
  5. But the most important one is: free/opensource. The projects should let you print without charge the originals and the guest designs
Categories
Flash Flash experiments

Flash experiments: the amazing cube

I decided to “share” my unstructured flash experiments:

And in this case it’s a flash application that creates flat, printable versions of cubes. Just print it, cut it out, glue it together and there you have it: the amazing cube:

[swf]http://www.matthijskamstra.nl/laboratory/swf_experiments/amazing_cube.swf, 450, 450[/swf]

Or just check the amazing cube full screen..

Categories
Urban papercraft

Shin Tanaka – Mask Hoody [series 01]

Shin Tanaka has created for us to download and build: Mask Hoody [series 01]

Mask Hoody

there is a blank Mask Hoody for the designers, who want to participate in the next series.


biochem
camo2
camo3
camo
face
fake
rainbow
rough
ska
sporty
stab
blank

Categories
Open source / Freeware

Replace commercial software with opensource/freeware

I am convinced that a lot of people don’t want to buy commercial software because of the price.
And I’m also convinced that a lot of people don’t want to use illegal software.
But they don’t know which software they can use beside the commercial program and there friends will only advise the program they (illegally) using because there friends advised them to.

Lets stop the chain, and put some opensource/freeware software against there commercial counterpart!

Commercial software Replacement software OS
ACDSee XnView UNIX, Windows, Mac OS X
Irfanview Windows
Nero CDBurnerXP Pro Windows
Winrar , Winzip , PowerArchiver 7-zip Windows
Izarc Windows
Microsoft Word abiword Linux, Windows, Mac OS X
Microsoft Office Open Office Linux, Windows, Mac OS X
Adobe Illustrator Inkscape Windows, Mac OS X
Adobe Photoshop GIMP ** Linux, Windows, Mac OS X
Microsoft Outlook Mozilla Thunderbird Linux, Windows, Mac OS X
Macromedia Dreamweaver Nvu Linux, Windows, Mac OS X

** Use Gimpshop! if you used to be a Adobe Photoshop user: it will make GIMP and Photoshop similar.

Of course this list is much longer…
So if you need to find something else; here are some places you can look
CleanSoftware.org – Free software, no nasties!
vinterstille.dk – Free alternatives to Macromedia and Adobe
Open Source…for designers?
alts.homelinux.net – Free alternatives
Free Software alternatives to proprietary applications on the Microsoft Windows OS.
Freeware programs and applications
Freeware Programs that replace Commercial Programs

Almost every commercial program has a freeware program that does almost the exact same thing, maybe sometimes better.
So drop a comment about commercial software that you want to replace.

Categories
Misc

Illustration by Enkeling

A illustration a friend of mine did for Parool Magazine:

Enkeling‘s interpretation of Gadget Freak:

Gadget Freak

It’s me with a papercraft Tetsujin (sadly enough the site is no longer available)

Categories
Flash experiments

Flash experiments: a new category

I added the category “Flash experiments” in which I will show you all my experiments.

Which usually lead to nothing, but I have fun making them.
And I have a lot of them, so this seems the best place to show them.

So to sum it up:

  • Little projects to fix a “itch” I have
  • Usually not very usefull
  • But fun to make
  • Sometimes animations
  • OOP

Soon more about this Category

Categories
Design Grumm

Grumm update: Extensions

When I started to create Grumm I wanted it to be a one piece (one A4) papermodel which is “easy” to build.
And because it is a “easy” model, it’s also easy to create a skin for it.

The next plan was to create extensions for Grumm.
These extensions could be more difficult, but would improve Grumm.

A extension is an addition (extends) to the main papermodel

The comments about Grumm at toydigger forum confirm that.

So here a little update about this extension project:

  • Grumm “Nuts & Bolts” head
  • Grumm Wrench and hands
  • Grumm shoe

And the examples are glued to a basic Grumm body and legs.
Grumm the Wrecker - beta

Categories
Urban papercraft

Flatpack toys other then ReadyMech

Readymechs are free flatpack toys designed to fit on an 8.5�x11� and to be printed on any printer.


update #1: After updating my blog to Thickbox (of course by a wp-thickbox plugin and don’t forget wp-jQuery), if found out that some of the images I found are missing… So that’s the update I did!

I’ve written about ReadyMech before and I wanted to know if there were more examples of the flatpack toys…

A while back I got a Computer Art from May 2006.
In this magazine was a winner from the Computer Arts forum contest who could design the best Flatpack toys .
The winner was Rigel (Sarah Bibby) and her creation is called Glump (I can’t find anything about this).

I’ve been looking for the result of this contest but could find very little.
So I asked the peeps of toydigger (it’s in Dutch) to help… no result.

Update: I changed the way you can view the images (it was too much…). I used Safirul Alredha wp_lightbox2 plugin for this, and it looks very nice.

Today I try to find some more FlatPack examples and this is my result:
Flat Pack collectionClick to enlarge

Categories
Open source / Freeware

Today I hit the 1000+ spam stopped by Akismet

You got to love Akismet…

Today I had a peak of 72 spam massages in 1 day (which is the highest I had since I started blogging, but there are blog who laught at this number).
Which set the total counter to 1061 deleted spam massages.

So it’s a sad day that bloggers need to catch spam massages, but a good day because I didn’t have to read / select / delete 1062 spam massages myself.

I ♥ Askimet

Update #1:
Here: Miahz and Emi seems to be having the same thoughts about this subject.

Categories
Design Grumm

Grumm by Enkeling: Grummeling

I’ve asked a couple of friends and colleague to design a skin for Grumm.

The first to finish a skin is Symen Veenstra aka Enkeling and he called it: Grummeling

Grumm by Enkeling: Grummeling

And Grummeling from all angles:

[swf]http://www.matthijskamstra.nl/laboratory/rotation/slideshow_v03.swf?xmluri=http://www.matthijskamstra.nl/laboratory/rotation/xml/grumm_enkeling_grummeling_web.xml , 450 , 335[/swf]