World of WarCrafts: The world of papercraft
World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself; contact our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.
New from the Department of Old News (wait ... wut?): We're still nuts about papercrafting. While we've spotlighted papercraft before on the site, we haven't featured it specifically on World of WarCrafts. Never let it be said that World of WarCrafts left a creative stone unturned!
Papercrafting is not the same thing as origami, which is the Japanese art of folding paper into intricate representations, preferably without cutting or glue. Papercrafting, in contrast, is the process of creating scale models from heavy, pre-printed paper or stock. Craftsy types download patterns rated by difficulty from sites such as World of Warcrafts Unofficial Papercrafts. Site manager Pascal was profiled last year by the Blizzard's official European WoW community site. We talked to Pascal recently for a fresh spin on WoW papercrafting.
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World of Warcrafts Unofficial Papercrafts was established some two years to spotlight papercrafting patterns and completed models. Today, the site features more than 100 models, ranging from a simple barrel to a life-sized Frostmourne. Most popular: the aforementioned Frostmourne, characters from the game, the Hood of the Malefic and the Treasure Chest.
So how's it all put together? The usual method uses 3-D modeling software to edit game models to create appropriate poses, apply textures and make them simpler and "papercraft-able." The templates themselves are created with another program, Pepakura. "It's not too hard to do," Pascal says, "but you need to learn how all the programs work -- so it's not for beginners. On the other hand, though, everyone can build papercraft models, since all you need a printer, some sheets of paper, some scissors and glue. You then just need to take your time and to be careful to properly cut and glue the pieces together. I don't offer help about how to make them, though, since it's a complicated process when you're new at it."
World of Warcrafts Unofficial Papercrafts is all about reader participation. "Everyone can have their models featured on the site too," encourages Pascal. "They just have to e-mail me the templates, and if I judge them well made, interesting and buildable, I'll post them on the website. I also post pictures of built models that people send me."
Some of these models are pretty persnickety even for steady, experienced hands like Pascal's. "The most difficult WoW model I worked on was Magtheridon, which ended up being lost twice from HDD crashes -- I should really back up my stuff more often," he confesses. "It had about 50 pages and over 2,000 faces. Sadly, I never got to finish it. I had half the body printed and built when the second crash happened and didn't feel like starting again."
The most difficult model? Pascal thinks it might be Eranikus, whose spiked tail requires epic skill to take down.
Pascal himself no longer plays WoW. "I stopped a little before the frost expansion came out," he admits. "I was playing a bunch of 70s characters then, a Tauren tanking warrior, Undead priest and Tauren boomkin being my mains. I'm kinda still pissed off that I never got to get my Zul bear mount; we were always one to two minutes too late for it."
Explore the world of papercrafts in more depth at World of Warcrafts Unofficial Papercrafts.
