11 January 2008

Chuck Norris Papercraft



Chuck Norris,roundhouse kicker martial artist,Walker-Texas Ranger Hollywood actor/tough guy,Chuck Norris Facts internet phenom, and just recently, Huckabee political campaigner. Love him or hate him, he's here to stay. Mike Mcdermott(billybob884) has created this Chuck Norris papercraft to beat the living daylights out of all the other papercrafts.

Chuck Norris - [Download Page] [Interesting Facts]

Thomas the Tank and Friends Papercraft



I've notice that this character is quite popular among kids and adults and I've seen stores stacked full of toys and other merchandise having this brand. So I looked around to see if anybody has built any Thomas the Tank papercraft and lo and behold, not only did I find Thomas, I also found some of his friends. But before that, well talk some more about him.

He originated from the United Kingdom and was the wonderful creation of Rev. Wilbert V. Awdry. The reverend came out with a children's book called "The Railway Series" back in 1945 (41 books in all) in which Thomas was based on. It covers the adventures of a group of trains and other transportation vehicles living on the Island of Sodor.

It was only until 1984 when Thomas' popularity picked up when Thomas the Tank Engine and Friends, a British children's TV series was first broadcasted. To date, this TV series is still running strong (11th season) and has spawned numerous spin-offs. Also wanted to point out that in Thomas the Tank Engine, the word "tank engine" is also known as a steam engine. And the word "tank' by itself refers to a water tank not an armoured vehicle. If you want to know more interesting stuff about Thomas you can head on to his official web site.



Now for the paper models, this set was designed by Takahiro Kojima and can be found on his web site, Paper Model World. Includes papercrafts for Thomas the Tank Engine, James the Red Engine, Gordon the Big Engine, Bertie the Small Red Bus, and finally an Annie and Clarabel papercraft, this two are Thomas' coaches (carriage). You can also check out Mr. Kojima's other notable works which include a Back to the Future De Lorean papercraft, Porco Rosso's Savoia S.21 papercraft, and Thunderbird 1 and Thunderbird 5 papercrafts.

Thomas the Tank and Friends - [Download Page] [Translated Page]

Site Update: Almost Done



* This will be the new layout for Paperkraft.net, goodbye to the old "fragmented" look.

* I still can't figure out the widget delays, as you may notice some of them load pretty slow. I'll tidy up the code and we'll see what happens. The Buzz Cloud was moved to the left side because it was not getting enough attention on the right.

* I took out the previous image background (the one w/ stripes) to cut down the loading time for the front page and replaced it with this simple one (1kb shadow effect)

* Still trying to fix comments section. If you click on a post and scroll all the way down you'll see that the comments part is a bit confusing, it lacks separation and you can't easily figure out which comment is whos.

* Finally, the Chokipeta Tank contest, a lot of people have been asking as to what happened to it. Well, it miserably failed, there was only one entry submitted on time and it came from Deutschland. Unfortunately I had to disqualify it because it had the wrong theme and didn't have the proof I asked for. A lot of reasons come to mind on why it failed, maybe tanks are not that popular, not everybody has a camera, not enough time, too busy enjoying the holidays, or maybe Chokipeta isn't as popular to the masses as I believe him to be? The Chokipeta Tank would probably be included on a giveaway contest or added to another papercraft kit for a different type of contest - this time with proper planning :)

09 January 2008

Pokemon Dialga Papercraft



"Gotta catch them all" they say, the famous tag line for the Pokemon series. Today we caught a new one, this is the Pokemon Dialga papercraft and it was sent in through email just a few minutes ago. I'm not sure who made it, there's no mark or note on the pattern about the designer except for a date on the photo that came with it - it was dated more than a year ago. If you know the designer or if the designer is reading this, send me your information so I could properly credit you. Brief note about Dialga, it's a dragon/steel type Pokemon, resembles a long-neck dinosaur with metal plating (armor), was featured as the boxart cover for the Nintendo DS game Pokemon Diamond.

Update: we've just now found out the source of this papercraft, I'm not well versed in Japanese so we'll just call the designer Eggman. I've updated the link as well to point to his blog - Egg Feeling? - there's also a Pepakura file (.pdo) that you can download.

Dialga - [Download Page]

07 January 2008

Chibi Anime Papercraft - Kira Kira (Kirari Siino)



I've never posted any stuff from the Glue2 Chronicle? site before, but it's got a bunch of cool looking paper models so they'll get their proper intro to Paperkraft.net today. I'm not really sure how to pronounce their site name, is it Glue Two or Glue Squared or Glue Glue? The site's owner and designer is named "atom" and we'll just leave it at that.

On to the goods, the most recent update on their site features a Japanese PC game character called Kirari Siino, she's the main character of "Kira Kira". This is a chibi-style papercaft model, it comes complete with a guitar and microphone with stand. Their site is easy to navigate so you won't have problems looking for the download links and instructions.

There are two other papercrafts in particular that has gotten my attention. First, there's this weird and at the same time cool looking paper model of what looks like a half-human bird with some sort of helmet on which he simply called "helmet bird". It's very weird looking so you'll have to see the pic below to understand what I'm talking about. It's taken from a 15th century triptych painting called "The Garden of Earthly Delights" by Hieronymus Bosch, a painter from the Netherlands whose works often depicts sin and the evil of men. He like to use images of nude humans, demons and half-human animals.



The second papercraft is called the "letter bird", this one is from Bosch's other painting called "Temptaion of Saint Anthony". I'm definitely going to build both of this birds and add it to my display case.



There are other great paper models on the site that you can check out but I'll let you do the exploration on your own (for fun). All papercraft models are free to download, so just follow the link below.

Chibi Anime Papercraft - Kirari Siino [Glue2 Chronicle]


Chibi Anime Papercraft - Sarina Kashiwara [Related Post]

"Papercraft" - Sasatoku Printing Co.



There have been a lot of requests from people who are just starting out with papercrafts for easy or beginners models, most of the the time I'll post links to simple cube-style paper models but it seems that they don't really find it challenging enough and that one of their biggest complaints on it is that it doesn't quite resemble what the description says. Today we have a huge number of papercrafts and an even larger amount of papercraft related items that are easy enough for beginners and "quite satisfying" to look at when you finish it.

Sasatoku Printing Co. is a Japan based company that specializes in technical information support, they help their customers/clients in achieving their business goals by utilizing various computer technologies. There's a section on their web site called "Present" which houses their in-house designed papercrafts. Educators, teachers, parents should take note of this site because this could be an invaluable tool for easily getting their younger students or kids into an educational activity and having fun while doing it.

The Sasatoku papercraft section is divided into 7 parts:

1. Papercraft Alphabet - It has paper models whose name (first letter) symbolizes each of the letters on the English alphabet. A for apple, B for Bus, C for Coffee, etc. - you get the flow. Currently, only A to N is available.



2. Fairy Tale papercraft - Sets of papercafts from famous childhood fables, folk tales, and fairy tales popularized by the Brothers Grimm.

"Three Little Pig papercraft" (wolf included of course),

"Bremen Town Musicians papercraft" - German tale in which an old donkey, dog, cat, and rooster, no longer wanted by their masters, set out for Bremen to become musicians.

"Hansel and Gretel papercraft" - Includes Hansel, Gretel, Witch, and Gingerbread house paper models

"The Three Bears papercraft aka Goldilocks and the Three Bears papercraft" - Includes papa bear, mama bear, little bear, Goldilocks, and furniture paper models.

3. Pop-up greeting cards - Has summer and winter themes.

4. Paper Automata - My favorite section of the site.



5. Miscellaneous Paper crafts

6. Dioramas - Depictions of various seasons and holidays.

7. Paper Flowers


Papercrafts - [Download Page] [English Page] translation via Google Translate

06 January 2008

Year of the Rat Papercraft - Ryo Tokisato



Here's another papercraft for the Year of the Rat (the first one was here), this time it's from our good friend Ryo Tokisato. It's very well designed and comes in a variety of colors that include white, gray, pink, purple, yellow, and a special one that has the lucky red color.

Rat Papercraft - [Download Page]