Papercraft Wetland Animals

As a way of educating the public about wetland habitats, Ducks Unlimited Canada offers ten free 3D paper models of wetland animals. Pictured above is a painted turtle, a leopard frog, a largemouth bass and a yellow spotted salamander. Also available are models of a mallard duck, a great blue heron, a great horned owl, a beaver, a red fox, and a dragonfly. Templates for each of the animals are available here.

Winged Reindeer Christmas Ornament Papercraft

According to the instructions for this Christmas ornament papercraft, this winged reindeer is none other than Comet, one of Santa's eight reindeer. Ohh, so that's how they fly! ;) This papercraft reindeer was created by artist Shane McDermott for the 2009 holiday season and may be downloaded here.

Chibiterasu Papercraft

Here is an awesome Chibiterasu papercraft by Lyrin-83, one of the most talented papercrafters on DeviantART (in my humble opinion ^^). Lyrin created the 3D model and the textures for the papercraft template all "from scratch" rather than using a 3D model extracted from a video game. Chibiterasu is the young wolf from the Nintendo DS game Okamiden which is a sequel to the Playstation 2 and Wii game, Okami. Lyrin has provided a link to the template for this paper model here.

Papercraft Rockhopper Penguins

These papercraft rockhopper penguins look a little grumpy. Maybe they are upset about being on the endangered species list. ;) There are several different species of rockhopper penguins, which are also called "crested penguins" (for obvious reason). These papercraft ones look most like the northern rockhopper penguin species. The templates for the two penguins are available for download here.

Horse Illusion Papercraft

Here is a horse to add to your collection of illusion papercraft animals. ^^ This illusion was created by the OSA-IFISC Student Chapter for a 2009 Science Fair on Menorca Island, Spain. OSA-IFISC Student chapter members are Ph.D. students with a common interest in optics. If you are not familiar with this type of paper model, it creates an optical illusion as you move about the room that the head and eyes of the animal are following you. The template for the horse is located here.

Other Illusion Papercraft Animals

Dragon Illusion Papercraft

Robot Dog Illusion Papercraft

Cat Illusion Papecraft

Cute Animal Papercraft

Here are some super cute papercraft animals by Japanese designer Ryo Tokisato. You gotta love them! In addition to the penguin, shark, chameleon, and rabbit shown here, there are also available a fox, a boar, a sperm whale, mice (in six different colors), and two different cows. The PDF templates for each of these may be downloaded at Tokisato's web page here. Once at the web page, click on the photo of the animal to download the template.

Karatsu Kunchi Parade Float Paper Models

Karatsu Kunchi is a three day festival that takes place each November on the Japanese island of Kyushu. Each day of the festival there is a parade in which large floats are drawn through the streets by families who live on the island. Each of the floats was originally built in the 1800's. Pictured above are papercraft models of three of the floats. From left to right are a red lion, a green lion and a red bream fish. Templates and instructions for each of these paper models may be downloaded at the bottom of the page here.

Evil Cartoon Animal Automata

These cantankerous automata critters were created by Juan Diego Sanin. Turn the cranks on their backs and their arms wave and the stars on their chests rotate. From left to right we have Gato Satanico (Satanic Cat), Oso Maloso (Bad Bear), and Conejo Malgenio (Cranky Rabbit). The free papercraft templates for the evil trio may be downloaded here, here and here.

Pokemon Papercraft: Boxy Pikachu

Here's a simple one piece Pikachu papercraft by Lee Urn Lun of Malaysia. As everyone knows, Pikachu is one of the main characters in the Pokemon video games and the Pokemon animated television show. This papercraft is a modification by Lun of his paper model bunny template. A download of the Pikuchu template is available here. The model in the photograph above was built by my young daughter. ^^

Lord of the Rings Papercraft: Shelob

For whatever the reason, Lord of the Rings papercraft is a rare thing. This Shelob paper model is one of the few examples around. Shelob is described by author J. R. R. Tolkien as being an "evil thing in spider form" whose food was "all living things". In the books, Shelob first appears in the second book in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Two Towers, however in the movie trilogy her appearance is delayed until the The Return of the King, the third book in the series. This papercraft was created by "Kangu" and the Pepakura PDO template is available here. When building this model it should be noted that the gluing tabs for the legs may need to be trimmed down some in order to get the legs to fit together properly. [via Bongo Papercraft]

Cow Buggy Papercraft

This papercraft cow buggy may represent some real festival or it may just be a fanciful creation by the artist, but either way it sure is cute. ^^ Japanese artist Geco Hirasawa calls her work a "moo moo buggy". A template is available on Geco's DeviantART page here. Be sure to check out her collection of excellent paintings while you are there.

Simple Sea Serpent Papercraft

Sometimes simple papercraft can be the most fun to build. This paper toy sea serpent by artist Laura Schlipf gets my vote in the fun-to-build category. Despite being Laura's first papercraft design, she has added some creative touches like including an extra page of "humps" in the template which may be printed out as many times as desired to make (as she puts it) a serpent that is "reeeally long". The three pages of the template may be found here, here, and here.

Related Papercraft:
Loch Ness Monster

Japanese Deep Sea Papercraft

From the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) comes a nice assortment of deep sea papercraft. In addition to eight sea creature papercraft there are papercraft of two submarines, a ship and an oceanographic buoy. My favorite is the manta ray. PDF templates for each of these may be found at the JAMSTEC Papercraft website. Just click on the photos once you are there.

A Rommy Birthday

It has become something of a tradition at our house to make papercraft decorations for birthdays. This weekend we celebrated my wife's birthday and I decorated with a Rommy bunny paper toy. The Rommy series of paper toys are the creation of Japanese paper engineer Tetsuya Watabe. His latest Rommy designs may be downloaded at his website. I chose Watabe's "Kiss, Kiss, Kiss" Rommy because it goes well with the secret pet name I have for my wife (don't tell, but it is the same as the name of a certain brand of carrots in the US). Want to know another secret? Most of the variations in the Rommy series are no longer available for download, however an archive of all the past designs may be found here.

Lion Coin Bank Papercraft

Here is a simple, two piece papercraft lion coin bank. It makes a perfect project for young children just learning the ways of papercraft and when finished, they can use it to store their allowance. This bank is offered by the Practice Loan Company on their website here. As you might guess by the coat of arms on the lion's tummy, the company is located in England. Thanks Andy for letting me know about this one!

A NiceBunny Birthday

This past October I built some papercraft animals for my daughter's birthday cake. As to not show favoritism, when my two sons celebrated their birthdays this weekend I built them some cake toppers as well. One son aspires to be a DJ someday and the other is a fan of all things Samurai so I chose to build two NiceBunny papertoys by Brian Castleforte, USA. On the left is a NiceBunny DJ, 2006, which can be downloaded here. And on the right is a 2007 NiceBunny Samurai from the "Hedkase" series which can be downloaded here.

Papercraft Animals #2

In a previous post I mentioned making papercraft animals for my daughter. Here are some more I built for her. Each one of these papertoys is based on a cylinder shape. From left to right the models are:

• "Funny Cats" (there are several designs available) by Yuuku, Japan, 2004 which can be found here.
  
  
• "Goldie Chick" by Tadan, Sweden, 2007 which can be found here.
  
  
• Panda by Toylava, Japan, 2006 which can be found here.

Papercraft Animals #1

My daughter wanted animals as decorations on her birthday cake. These are a few I built for the occasion. Each one is constructed out of 110 lb (200 gsm) cardstock, although using something less stiff might have been easier due to their curving construction. To keep their paper feet from getting ruined by the icing I designed a cake top platform for them to sit on. With some modifications I may post the platform later as a download. All the animals pictured were designed by Tetsuya Watabe, Japan, 2007-2008 and can be found here.