Paper Craft

Pictured here is Birdo, paper craft style. I made her (him? There’s some question to this critter’s gender, depending on what you read) from four sheets of cardstock and some glue. I didn’t design her (I like the idea of Birdo as a girl better. She’s Yoshi’s girlfriend!) I just printed the pieces, cut and glued the paper, and tada! I now have a new figure for the living room!

Of course, the bomb there is not Birdo, it's a paper craft version of the FallOut 3 Mini-Nuke...on top of my washing machine. It's really pretty impressive to see the range of objects possible with the craft. The Mini-Nuke looks great on my 'Villain Shelf' with my gas mask and dummy grenade and the like (I'll probably talk about the villain shelf later).

The whole Paper Craft movement/hobby or whatever it is, is really interesting to me. It also went pretty much right under my radar for way longer than it should have. I knew people did something involving cutting, folding, and gluing paper to make figures and what not, but I didn’t realize how big it had gotten, or how fun it actually would be.

I think that a really good hobby should be cheap, take up time, and provide a sense of accomplishment. Paper Craft does all three reaaaaallly well. New paper craft models are easy to get, and most of them are free. You just download them, print them, cut them out, and glue them together. It takes quite a while to finish a piece. Birdo took a couple of days of work at a fairly obsessive pace to finish, same for the Mini-Nuke. I was also very proud of finishing her, and have a neat little figure to display, now.

There’s almost as many websites devoted to this hobby as there are models, so rather than link to any one in particular, I’ll just say there’s tons. Now to get back to cutting! I think I’ll start on a mask, next.