Star Wars: The Clone Wars Papercraft - Jedi Holocron

A couple of months ago I mentioned I wanted to start designing some Star Wars papercraft. Last week I completed my first two designs! These simple 1:1 scale paper models are of the holocron and the Kyber memory crystal which the bounty hunter Cad Bane steals from the Jedi in the Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated television series. As the storyline of the series reveals, the Kyber crystal contains information on every known Force-sensitive child in the Star Wars universe, but the information can only be accessed by inserting the crystal inside the holocron. The template for these two papercraft may be downloaded here.

Disney Papercraft: Atlantis Crystal

Atlantis: The Lost Empire was the first Disney animated film to have a Science Fiction theme. In the movie, a group of early twentieth century explorers locate the lost city of Atlantis. The inhabitants of Atlantis are found to wear necklaces with blue energy crystals which they use to power various machines in their city. The papercraft template for this Atlantean energy crystal was created by Mike at Biosocket.com for his kids who wanted a toy crystal after watching the movie. The template may be downloaded here. [build photo by CrisRaquel at DeviantART]

Stone Textured Paper Dice

Here's some nice stone textured papercraft dice by artist William McAusland. If the templates for these dice are printed one per page, the dice come out rather large, so I printed out four templates per page instead. Doing so resulted in the finished dice being a more usable size. Six different dice are available, four of which are pictured: d4, d6, d8, and a pair of d10 dice that are equivalent to a d100. Not pictured are the d12 and d20 dice. Templates may be downloaded here.

Platonic Solid Lanterns Papercraft

These geometric Christmas light covers are the work of the "playful.geometer" at Flickr. The five different covers are based on the five shapes of the Platonic Solids. The lovely patterns on each of the solids are "kaleidoscoped" fractal images. I like the paper lantern effect these have when they are lit up. Templates for each of the five are available here and here. If you are interested in creating your own decorative patterns, a educational math website has some blank Platonic Solid templates available here.

Geometric Paper Models With Plane Filling Motifs

What makes these geometric paper models interesting is not so much their actual shapes, but the motifs that decorate their surfaces. These models and the plane filling motifs that cover them are the work of German artist Michael Albers. Plane filling motifs (sometimes referred to as "tessellations") are defined as a collection of identically shaped figures that interlock to fill a plane with no overlaps or gaps. Alber's tessellations are strongly reminiscent of some of the works of artist M. C. Escher. Fifty-nine different paper models are available for download at Alber's web page here.

Rainbow Colored Torus Knot Papercraft

In mathematics a torus is defined as a geometric shape created by revolving a circle in three dimensional space about an axis coplanar with the circle. Some examples of objects with torus-like shapes are doughnuts and inner tubes. Torus shapes can be deformed into "knots", that is closed, intertwined geometric forms with no beginning or end. This colorful papercraft torus knot is the work of Matthias Baas of Germany. The knot's template is interesting in that it is designed to be printed double sided so that the printed fold lines all occur on the inside of the model. The PDF template for the knot is located here.

Polyhedral Playing Card Construction

If you have an extra deck of playing cards on hand and feel like building something cool, here is just the thing. This 30 sided, slide-together playing card construction is the creation of Francesco De Comité. I think it would be interesting to see one of these constructed out of other types of cards or even a standard deck of cards with the backs facing outward instead. Now if I can just find the time...^^ De Comité's template may be found here.

Astronomy Papercraft: Heart Globe Earth

Here's another fascinating glue-less Earth globe papercraft from Canadian designer David Swart. Starting with the geometric form of a Pentagonal Hexecontahedron, David added slotted tabs in a way that makes each of the globe's faces heart shaped. A template of the globe is available here. Also for a limited time David is taking requests to create custom templates of both this heart globe and his previous slide together globe puzzle. Just send him your favorite spherical image and he will do the rest. Further details on the "request-athon" may be found here.

Eye of Providence Pyramid Paper Toy

This paper toy based on the Pyra:Minds template takes its imagery from the Great Seal of the United States which appears on the back of the US one dollar bill. The eye at the top of the pyramid was referred to by the creators of the seal as "The Eye of Providence". Despite modern day Freemasonry's efforts to set the record straight, urban legends still abound that the pyramid is either a Masonic or an Illuminati symbol. Be that as it may, it still makes a nice companion to my Masonic Medallion papercraft. ^^ The template for the pyramid was created in 2009 by illustrator Maximiliano Garcia Luna of Argentina and may be found here. I achieved the hovering eye effect in my build with a carefully placed toothpick.

Sims 3 Plumb-bob Papercraft and Origami

In the Sims 3 video game a marker called a "plumb-bob" hovers over the head of a selected character and indicates the character's mood by its color. A green plumb-bob indicates a good mood, while a red plumb-bob indicates a horrible mood. DeviantART artist "killer094" of Finland has created nicely textured papercraft versions of both the green and red plumb-bobs. Template downloads are available here and here. If you would rather make an origami version of a Sims plumb-bob, "phreed83" at Ehow.com has instructions posted here. The photo at right shows the origami plumb-bob rigged to wear on your head for cosplay or Halloween. For a joke, I'd hang one of these over my desk at work if I thought anyone there would have a clue what it was.^^

Business Card Polyhedra

This model by Harrison Ainsworth is one in a series of five glueless constructions of the Platonic solids built using standard business cards. Detailed instructions for building each of the five models may be found at Harrison's website here. The pictured model is an icosahedron. Instructions are also available for models of a tetrahedron, a cube, an octahedron, and a dodecahedron.

Business Card Origami - Orb Unit

I haven't come across too many origami pieces that make use of curves, so I found this "orb unit" very interesting. This piece was constructed using four business cards that are creased with partial circles and then locked together. If you would like to attempt to make a orb unit of your own, a copy of the crease pattern template is available here. The original creator of the orb template is reported to be Jeannine Mosely.

Business Card Cube Constructions

Pictured in the upper left corner is a basic two inch (5 cm) cube which can be created without glue from six standard size business cards. These basic cubes, by interlocking the flaps on the sides, can be connected together to form larger constructions. On the right is a letter "Z" built by Sam Allen using 2,400 business cards. In the lower left corner is a depth three Menger’s Sponge built by Doctor Jeannine Mosely using 66,048 business cards! You will notice that the surface of the Menger's Sponge is flapless compared the surface of the "Z". A flapless cube may be constructed by adding business cards with the flaps turned inward to each of the six faces of the basic cube.

Excellent illustrated instructions by Ned Batchelder on how to build the basic cube as shown in the upper left can be found here. Details on the construction of the "Z" can be found here. And finally, the story on the Menger Sponge construction can be found at The Institute for Figuring website which also offers instructions here that illustrate nicely how to create flapless cubes.

Paper Dice Bonanza

Bruno Van de Casteele at www.puam.be has created a series of ten paper dice for use in role-playing games (RPG). The dice designs range from a two sided die all the way up to a pair of ten sided dice that can be used to simulate the roll of a single one hundred sided die. Five of Bruno's designs are shown. From left to right, following the notation common in RPG systems, the dice are a d8, a d10, a d4, a d20, and a d6. If the dice templates are printed without modification, the resulting dice come out rather large as can be seen by the size of the red d10 (I have added a quarter to the photo for reference). I was able to get a smaller scale on the other four dice by printing two templates per one sheet of cardstock. Downloads of the templates are available in both PDF and GIF format.

Astronomy Papercraft - Globe Puzzle

This fascinating globe puzzle has been on my "to do" list for a long time, but I can't seem to find the time to build it. The puzzle is made out of 60 rectangular pieces which are slotted together and held in place with a small amount of tape to form a dodecahedron globe. The creator of the puzzle has a template and easy to follow instructions posted here. Using the same construction technique, the author has also created a "panorama sculpture" in which a panoramic photograph has been mapped onto the globe instead of an image of the Earth. The results are very cool. The panorama sculpture can be seen here.

Tron Bit Papercraft - Alternate Templates

Based on some comments I received after posting my Tron Bit papercraft design, I have created some alternate templates.

First, I have re-colored templates of the Yes Bit. For the original Yes Bit template I had sampled the color from a digital image of the Bit which gave me a dark orange color. Some Tron fans feel the Yes Bit's true color is closer to yellow than orange, so I searched through other digital images from the movie until I found a more yellow image and then sampled it for the re-colored template. The image and the resulting model are shown on the left. It is still a little orange in my opinion, but much closer to yellow than the original model.

Secondly, I have created versions of the original temples with all fold lines eliminated except for the fold lines at the gluing flaps. This will allow more experienced papercrafters to build cleaner looking, lineless models if they desire.

A zip file of the re-colored Yes Bit templates (with and without fold lines) may be downloaded here. A zip file of the three original templates without fold lines may be downloaded here. If you missed the original post for the lined templates of the Bit, you can see it here.

Tron Papercraft - Bit

"Bit" is a character from the 1982 Disney movie, Tron. Considered by some to be the first CGI character in a movie, Bit communicates by speaking only "yes" or "no". The orange shape above is the form Bit takes when answering "yes". The spiky red shape is the form when answering "no" and the blue shape is Bit's "neutral" form when not speaking. Here is a film clip showing Bit in action...

Even though this is the fifth papercraft design I have released, it was actually one of my first designs. Development of the design took a little longer partially because it is actually three models, but also because it took some time to create simplified templates for the complex geometry. For those out there who care about such things, the "yes" Bit is a octahedron, the "neutral" Bit is a compound of a icosahedron and a dodecahedron, and the "no" Bit is a second stellation of a icosahedron. Template information for each of the models is as follows:

Bit - "Yes" Configuration
Finished Size (with base): 7" (17.8 cm)
Number of Sheets: 2
Number of Parts: 4
Difficulty: 1/5
Download: Here

Bit - "Neutral" Configuration
Finished Size (with base): 7" (17.8 cm)
Number of Sheets: 4
Number of Parts: 26
Difficulty: 2/5
Download: Here

Bit - "No" Configuration
Finished Size (with base): 8" (20.3 cm)
Number of Sheets: 4
Number of Parts: 34
Difficulty: 5/5!
Download: Here

UPDATE: Lineless templates and a re-colored template of the Yes Bit are available now here.

Other Tron Papercraft:
Sam Flynn's Identity Disc
Full Size Tron Helmet
Lightcyclist Bust
Sark's Identity Disc

Astronomy Paper Models #2

I came across an interesting website where you can upload any image and it will output a template of the image mapped onto an icosahedron. Above are photographs of two models I created using the website. For the first model I input a satellite image of the entire Earth. For the second I input an image of an 18th century European map of the celestial sphere which shows artistic representations of the constellations. Each model is about 3" across and they were each constructed with cardstock and double sided tape. To try it yourself, go to http://www.hirax.net/map/.

Astronomy Paper Models #1

Here are three astronomy papercraft I built. Each one was made with heavyweight typing paper and double sided tape. The larger one in the middle was my first attempt at paper modeling. From left to right they are:

• Moon Icosahedron by Calvin J. Hamilton, USA, 1998
  Model can be found here.
  


• Polyhedron Skyglobe by Richard Powell, Great Britain, 1998
  Model can be found here.
  
  
• Earth Rhombicuboctahedron by Carlos A. Furuti, Brazil, 2004
  Model can be found here.
  

The hardest part of each of these models was getting the final side taped in place without crushing the model.