The beauty of Papercraft

Now this isn't really comics, some would say it isn't even really illustration, more like a mixture of both and toy making thrown in, but it is something that always fascinated me. When I was growing up I loved to get creatures or character masks from the back of cereal packets - to the extent that we'd stomach some things we didn't really care for - give up the Ricicles for Rice Crispies just to get the Rhino to make from the back. Ah, the sacrifices of childhood. So, I'm mentioning this as we are thinking about doing a point of sale display bin for the next Mawil book we will be doing - which is a translation of 'Meister Lampe' which will be called 'Sparky O'Hare Master Electrician' in the UK(more on this soon). It's a little book and we thought it might be cool to have a box that could sit on the counter (well actually Mawil's encouraging us) so we need to imagine and make a box which will look attractive and interesting - it's all Papercraft of course, probably today's most usual use of the art of paper and card folding.

But it wasn't always so. In my little bit of research on the web I came upon this article on Papercraft on the great Irish illustration site Scamp. It's got a bundle of links to some great examples of modern and much older Papercraft - it makes me want to print them get them stuck to card and go ahead and build them. Some of these are brilliant - the Bert Simmons ones a little mind boggling in their complexity - make them for yourself or have some fantastic fun with your kids (oh and it's cheap so you will have money left over for the brilliant 'Sparky O'Hare' when it hits the shops).