Life-sized Lucario Papercraft
My latest papercraft project is almost complete, and it stands on its own, too!
papercraft
Helix Fossil
With the frenzy that has been Twitch Plays Pokemon taking the internet by storm over the last couple of weeks, I felt that I ought to do something to join in on the festivities.
I started by modeling a helix fossil pendant.
(Want one for yourself? Get it on Shapeways!)
I then thought that I’d like to have something a bit bigger… and since I’m no stranger to papercraft, that seemed like a good way to go!
The model required a fair bit of simplification to make it a practical papercraft project, but I think it came out ok. I’m also not so used to working on smaller papercraft projects, since I normally work on life-sized Pokemon so some of the joins are pretty messy.
Want to make your own? The PDF file is here. I printed the pattern out on light cardstock and then assembled the pieces with the printed lines on the inside of the model. You can start from the top left of the first page and build piece by piece. If you have any questions let me know and I’ll do my best to help you out.
Life-size Pokemon Papercraft WIP – Lapras and Lucario
Just thought I’d post some updates on my Papercrafting since I’ve been silent for a while.
If you’ve been following my comments on some of my previous papercraft posts (Bulbasaur and Charmander, Squirtle, Tepig) you know that I’ve had Lapras in progress and that I’ve been planning to make a Mewtwo.
I got Lapras done enough to display at our local Anime and Videogames convention, AVCon. It had everything except the flippers – a pretty good effort for a couple of weeks solid work, I think! Since AVCon I actually haven’t picked up the Lapras parts again, so I haven’t been able to finish it off. I guess my interest has waned since I solved the major engineering problems involved in getting the head to stand.
Here’s Lapras with me for scale. This was taken the night before AVCon. At the time I honestly didn’t know if it was going to work – getting the head to stand was a huge triumph.
When I wasn’t supervising the models, some kid crawled inside Lapras! You can see his legs through the side of the model.
As for Mewtwo… in December last year, pokemonpapercraft.net released a Lucario model, which I decided might make a better subject for my first attempt at a bipedal Pokémon. For a start, the finished model would stand at about half of Mewtwo’s size (1.2m vs 2m). Its smaller size also meant that each piece that I cut out would quite nicely fit on my cereal box cardboard, which is much nicer to work with than the cardboard that I used for Lapras. And in general, Lucario’s limbs are much less intricate than Mewtwo’s.
Over the Australia Day long weekend (exactly two years since I made Bulbasaur!) I got most of Lucario assembled. He used about 24 cereal boxes worth of cardboard… after saving up my housemate’s cereal boxes for a year I’m now almost completely out of boxes!
Here’s an in-progress shot of Lucario. I’ve been working on making this one in modular parts that can be slid in and out of the model. I learned from Lapras that if something is going to be big, or if you’re not sure about how the pieces are going to fit, it’s easier to deal with things if they’re in their own pieces. If you need to remake something, then you can just remake a single piece instead of having to take apart the whole model and potentially start from scratch.
I hope to finish Lucario off soon – since these photos I’ve already completed his arms, tail and legs – just the hair bits to go!
Tepig
Finally finished off Tepig today. It’s been sitting around with just the tail to go for a while. The curl in the tail was very fiddly (I can’t imagine doing that at the original model’s scale!) but fun. The tail was a bit droopy but I’ve used some hot glue to make it stand up. I usually use acetone based craft glue, which is great for sticking the tabs together. For attachments however, hot glue is the way to go.
Also, here’s a photo of WIP Lapras.
My work process for Lapras has been a bit different than for the starter pokemon. Since each polygon is so freaking huge, using cereal boxes is a bit impractical. Instead, I’ve had the templates printed at A1 size and I’m pasting them to 200gsm brown craft paper. It’s flimsier stuff than the boxboard used in cereal boxes, so the shapes don’t hold together as convincingly. As I progress more, I’ll have to add more support (I’ve been kind of papier mache-ing around some joints as I go) and may need to make some kind of scaffolding structure for the insides. Another consideration is going to be portability – I’d like to take Lapras out of the house, which may mean making it modular.
Squirtle
Whew! It’s about time for another one of these life-sized Pokemon. This one’s been waiting a while to be posted. I started on the templates on the drive to and from Manifest last year and have had it sitting mostly-assembled on my table for a few months now. I stalled in sticking the limbs to the body because I’d toyed with the idea of making them poseable, but I’ve finally given up on that idea and have just stuck them on.
As usual I’ve gotten my papercraft templates from pokemonpapercraft.net. Those guys do really awesome stuff!
Next papercraft: Tepig.