Category: Design

Design

How to create your own Papercraft

Post author By Matthijs Kamstra
Post date March 21, 2007
42 Comments on How to create your own Papercraft

A tutorial to make a papercraft initial(s). Of course you can spell whole names with it, but I suggest (strongly) to start with one letter en work you’re way up to you initials.

In this tutorial you don’t have to spend any money except for the paper you print it on.
It’s written for windows (sorry Apple users)

Update #1: Another post about Pepakura and Google Sketchup: Pepakura: Make Anything in Papercraft

Programs

For this tutorial you need a couple of programs, which are for free to get from the internet:
Pepakura designer v2 .1.2 – program that creates flat versions of a 3d model

Google SketchUp 6 – very simple 3d modeler

Optional (I will explane this later): PDFCreator – creates PDFs from any Windows program

Update #3: There are a lot of very good/ free 3D programs out there.
To name a view: Blender, Wings 3D, Metasequoia and there are probably a lot more.
The only reason I choose for Google SketchUp because I got it to work in a couple of minutes…

Google SketchUp is freeware, PDFCreator is open source (free) and Pepakura designer is shareware.
So the only limitation you have is Pepakura designer: in the version you can download and try out, it’s not possible to “Save” and “Export”. But I found that it’s possible to print, so a legal way to export what you have build in Pepakura is PDF.
This has of course some limitations, and the biggest one is you are not able to save you changes (which you can unlock for a lousy US$38).

What are we going to build?

Google Sketchup - MCK 3D logo
Lets make a text logo and I really want to use the logo I made a while back, but I realize that’s not for everybody….So lets make a logo out of freeware fonts, and find a font suitable for what I want.
I want to make a 3d version of mck and because I know how difficult it is to create round corners (“c”) I am looking for a bold/stong blocky font .
We could make a complete text logo, but when I started writing this tutorial I found out that with more then one letter, it started to be quite complex. Which is not bad, but quite difficult to point out how things work. So for this tutorial I will explain just one letter and we will make it 3d.

Step1: download and install

Except the programs discussed above (Pepakura designer v2.1.2, Google SketchUp 6 and PDFCreator) you also have to choose a nice font to create your initial/character in.

So lets search a nice letter with a nice “M” or “m” (or whatever letter you want).

For example a couple of font of dafont.com/:
Cowboys – big/strong and very little curves
Kroftsmann – big / strong and no curves
Aerojones nf – big / strong and round courners

But make this tutorial even easier I have chosen for a pixel-font from 04.jp.org named 04b-19.

MCK pixel font

Download the font(s) you want to use, and copy it in:
C:\WINDOWS\Fonts

Remember: a curly/round/thin font will look very pretty, but will be hell to build in a papermodel. So choose a continuous, bold, square font!

Step 2: Modeling in 3d

This is easier then it sounds so lets do it in little steps:

1.		Start Google Sketchup You will see a little dude just standing there, forget him. He is there just for the scale purposes and will not be seen in your end result.
2.		Find your font and change the Height and Extruded (when I doubt: try to follow the picture)
4.		Press on place and place the character.
5.		That’s all to it. Now save your file: for example “character.skp” and export to character.kmz (google earth 4) Pepakura Designer can open .KMZ files but they have to be google earth 4!

Step 3: create papercraft

It’s too easy will the get difficult? No!

Update #2: when I tried to import the PDF into illustrator, I noticed that the PDF wasn’t a vector file. Luckily there is a solution: change the default print mode to Vector Print (see point 3a.)

1.		If you’ve done what I asked, you have Pepakura installed (and if not, now is the time). Open Pepakura
2.		Open the character.kmz file you just saved on you’re hard drive
3.		Oke lets see what Pepakura does with this simple example: press “unfold’ Yep, it’s that easy!
3a.		Make sure that you change the default print setting, this will improve the quality of your print and makes it possible to import in Illustrator. Papakura – Print and Paperconfiguration
4.		Start you’re printer….. jadajada, you know what to do: Press file – print (prepare to export to PDF read this)

Step 4: start building

Grab you’re glue and scissors and start building.

Export

This is for people who want to “export” the papermodel/papercraft to a file and modify it in a vector program like Illustrator. (Perhaps Inkscape will work too, but I don’t have that installed)
Instead of printing the model to paper, you can print it to .PDF. And this file is easy to import in Illustrator.

The only thing that you have to do is install: PDFCreator.
This program is opensource (doesn’t cost anything) and works the same as your printer.
Instead of printing to a printer, which is connected to you computer or network, you print to PDFCreator. And this will create a PDF for you on you’re computer.

Tags Papercraft

Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft: All City Style

Post author By Matthijs Kamstra
Post date March 21, 2007

This is something I wanted to create, but now I find out it already exists… bad for me & good for me, and you: it combines two hobbies: papercraft and one of the-four-elements-of-hiphop: graffiti.

All City Style: if you don’t get it, you probably never will.
So to catch up: graffiti / tag and read this book: Subway Art

Not feeling so brave (or getting too old for that shit): here is an legal way to create your top-to-bottom!
And you can do in the comfort of your home, using crayons, finger-paint, or whatever you got laying around.

All City Style Blank Subway Car.

Two images to show what’s possible: [1] | [2]

Download the “All City Style Blank Subway Car” and start tagging!

Tags Papercraft, Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft

Shin Tanaka – Spiky baby [series 6] is out

Post author By Matthijs Kamstra
Post date March 17, 2007

SPIKE BABY series from Shin Tanaka is starting with SPIKE BABY[SERIES 06].

So you know what to do, t it out

Shin Tanaka papertoy series are only active for a short time and you missed it 🙁

And start downloading: the download pages for you on a platter:
assad
i
k
p
s
t
y
Bryan_Rollins
claupre
ELGIROGRAFICO
Gaurav
GGG
HELENA
Hixtri
LUNA
MSB_BLUE
MSB_GREEN
MSB_PINK
ocularinvasion
SB06_BOX_

Tags Papercraft, Shin Tanaka, Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft: Ghettopaper

Post author By Matthijs Kamstra
Post date March 14, 2007

GhettoPaper logo

This project combines two other interests of mine: HipHop (kinda indirect, but it is there) and papercraft:

Ghettopaper gives you the opportunity to design you own ghetto blaster.

And because the viewer in GhettoPaper isn’t all that (not really true, because you can also visit the website/mail the artist and download the file) you can view everything here my viewer:
GhettoPaper gallery

Tags Papercraft, Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft : Toypaper

Post author By Matthijs Kamstra
Post date March 7, 2007
1 Comment on Urban papercraft : Toypaper

I love this! It’s a combines two of interests: papercraft and Flash.

Toypaper from the little guy has some modification (custom) versions of ReadyMech but are not just a copy.

Besides having created some models which are already designed, there are also some, but will come more of them.
Toypaper examples

Customizable models are (for now):
Customkami (which is more or less a standard ReadyMech model) and Toypaper prototank 1 / Toypaper prototank 2.

Prototank is more an original, and looks like a lotta fun to customize.

Tags Papercraft, Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft

Shin Tanaka: Mask Hoody [series 02]

Post author By Matthijs Kamstra
Post date March 2, 2007

Shin Tanaka has started with Mask Hoody [series 02]

You can download them, and the nice guy I am: this is what you get in Series 02:

Shin Tanaka papertoy series are only active for a short time and you missed it 🙁

Happy building

Tags Papercraft, Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft: Paper Robots

Post author By Matthijs Kamstra
Post date February 7, 2007
3 Comments on Urban papercraft: Paper Robots

In one of my rss feeds I came across the papermodel of Optimus Prime (yeah: nerd I know..)
I am truly amazed at this papermodel: it’s almost as good as a action figure. It has joints that move freely and smoothly but the best of it all is: it transforms into a truck: this papermodel is a real transformer.

Paperrobots1999.com has 4 models with the same flexibility, but I want to focus on the blank robot version.
I’ve written about my definition of urban-papercraft and I was not sure if this model would fit my definition.

Until I read the story about another model of Paperrobots1999.com: the Kami Robo the Birdman.

This model is based upon the works of Tomohiro Yasui, who created over 200 of these papercraft wrestlers with there own name and a well-defined personality. And these wrestlers slug it out at kami-robo.com so check that out.

And so I started to realize that the blank robot is indeed a urban papercraft.
And for the inspiration you can check out the gallery of wrestlers made by Tomohiro Yasui.

Here two of my favourites:

Genie (King of evil)

Shark Hawk

And check out the rest of the wrestlers

Our check this video at YouTube – Kami-Robo Part 1:
(thx Kamiel for pointing me to this video)

[swf]http://www.youtube.com/v/yDgLpzKoeKc,425,350[/swf]

Tags Papercraft, Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft

Urban papercraft: Speakerdog

Post author By Matthijs Kamstra
Post date January 31, 2007

Update: Ben added five new designs of Speakerdog, check it out in this little gallery

Ben (the illustrator) is obsessed with Speakerdog. It started as a one-off canvas but the little chap got under his skin.

Ben made a papermodel of Speakerdog and shared it with us.

You can download them here:
Speakerdog original

Speakerdog Santa
And for the really creative there is also a blank version:
Speakerdog Blank

Tags Papercraft, Urban papercraft

Design Improvement

WordPress Sociable plugin

A while back I started writing this article but never finished it.
So today I did…

I like using opensource, and try to give something back to the people who make them.
So if I see bugs I report them, and if I see improvements I’ll send a massage or a sketch of the improvement.

And so I did with Sociable by Peter Harkins.

 Update: Peter started working on Sociable 2.0 (at the time of writing: beta 4) and a lot of improvements are made.

What is Sociable? The best description is from Peter himself:

Social bookmarking sites allow websurfers to save, catalog, and share interesting pages they find online. The Sociable plugin appends links for your readers to use those sites to the end of each of your blog’s posts, increasing your potential audience.

This is the email I send to Peter with improvements and some sketches I made.

Hi Peter,

First I wanted to thank you for creating the “Sociable” wp plug in.
It is exactly what I was looking for.

But this is not the reason I am sending this email
First the facts:
I downloaded “Download Sociable 1.2 (released 2006-03-26)”

and in this version you say that technorati is included
I couldn’t find it so I added it:

    'StumbleUpon' => Array(
        'favicon' => 'stumbleupon.png',
        'url' => 'http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=PERMALINK&title=TITLE',
    ),

    'Technorati' => Array(
        'favicon' => 'technorati.png',
        'url' => 'http://www.technorati.com/cosmos/search.html?url=PERMALINK&title=TITLE',
    ),

and my favorite StumbleUpon wasn’t included, so I added it to (StumbleUpon is one of the recommended addons from Firefox)

and I added the images….

no problem there.. probably something that was forgotten.

But because of this I found a bug:
I’ll just walk you through the steps:

uploaded and installed the wp plug in
selected some social bookmarking sites
couldn’t find technorati
so I wanted to edit the sociable.php from within wp and couldn’t (this is not a bug)
so I edit the sociable.php and uploaded it again (see above for the additions to the file)
checked if the sociable.php was changed (plug in >> plug in editor) and it was
options >> sociable and no Technorati or StumbleUpon
the only thing that seem to work was the button “Restore Built-in Defaults”

Extra / new features:

Add and edit sites via admin page (but it is already on potential future additions)
alert on “Restore Built-in Defaults” [view image]
position of the “Restore Built-in Defaults” not directly under the “Save Changes” button especially without an alert on it >> perhaps move it to the left side. [view image]
“Change the text displayed in front of the icons below” is a nice feature, but I can’t use it because I don’t like the hover on it (“these icon link….”). So for now I don’t put anything in there, but perhaps you can control this feature better [view image]:
1. keep it as it is
2. add a check box for the hover
3. add a text field for the text in the hover box
default is everything selected.. perhaps it would be nicer to start of with:
1. default set of popular social bookmark (my list would be: Digg, Delicious, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Furl, Newsvine ) source “Social Bookmarking (aka Going Viral)”
2. one (digg) and let the user make a conscious decision
3. none, and let the user make a conscious decision