Folded paper houses
Papercraft is actually a very cute childhood interest of mine.
When I was maybe seven years old, I discovered the Canon Papercraft website. It had tons of paper models available to download for free, from simple cutouts to realistic dinosaurs and spaceships. Little me loved those :)
The internet was still very new to me, and it quickly became one of my favourite websites to visit.
I didn’t even print or make many of the models. Mostly, I just dreamed about them, and that already brought me a lot of joy!
The Canon website felt like a gigantic online toy store where you could get everything for free, just for the price of convincing your mum to turn on the printer. We tried a few times, but we didn’t have the patience or good enough paper to assemble the models correctly in the end.
Now, many years later, childhood me would be happy to know that I’m an adult, I have my own printer, and nobody can tell me I’m wasting paper 😄
I don’t have very good equipment, but I have enough to do fun experiments!
I’ve been meaning to do something with papercraft for a very long time. When I started thinking about new things I could make for markets, I wanted to explore volume and create something beyond flat prints or stickers.
The closest I’ve come before might be the keychains I ordered a few months ago, but I wanted to go further.
So this week, I finally took the leap and made a very simple model, mostly just for fun. I’ve never seen another artist sell papercraft at an event, so I honestly have no idea if people would find it interesting at a market.
But I’m not at a point where I have to make something just because people will buy it. I’m very privileged to be in this position as an artist. I can make fun things simply because they interest me very much.
To stop overthinking and trying to get everything perfectly right on the first attempt, I started with something very primitive: a cube with a pointy roof. That was enough to see how the idea could work.
Before I continue, here is the final result!
As you can probably tell from the blue roof, this little test house is connected to my usual theme of the Wired City, the city where almost all my illustrations take place.
When it comes to paper models, though, I’m very, very far from building something complex or making a house that truly matches the buildings in my illustrations. One step at a time! I didn’t want to put too much ambition into this fun evening project.
A slightly exotic setup
To design the house digitally, I used a slightly exotic combination of Blender, a free 3D modelling program, and Krita, my usual digital drawing software.
This allowed me to edit the texture in Krita, then see the changes directly on the 3D model in Blender. I could look around it and get a better sense of the volume, which was especially important because my setup was a bit clunky!
If you’ve done any 3D modelling, you know how much of a pain it can be. I played a lot with Blender when I was younger, but never very seriously, so getting the UV mapping and everything else to work correctly was quite challenging.
2D is definitely more my thing :)
And it turns out I could have done it much more simply! Blender has an add-on that exports 3D models as papercraft patterns ready to print, and I completely forgot about it.
Here is the add-on if you want to try something similar. This is what I recommend!
One interesting thing about making this model is that it forced me to think about a building differently.
When I draw an illustration, I only need to show one side of a building, part of the roof, or a few windows. I don’t have to think about all the details hidden outside the frame. But with a paper model suddenly you need to draw everything!
I struggled a bit to come up with enough details for this one, but that leaves me plenty to improve next time :)
Imperfect, but charming
Speaking of improvements, I didn’t even try to use the same brush for every part of the texture. Some areas are a little blurry, while others are much more sketchy.
But I think that gives the house a nice touch. It looks imperfect and inconsistent on screen, yet it becomes very charming once it’s printed and folded.
There was also a bigger mistake: the roof printed completely wrong because the texture was flipped!
I had to figure out the setup by myself, but hopefully that will be fixed next time.
Still, I think these imperfections give the model its charm. We’re very used to seeing perfectly graphic printed objects, like packaging. But when the texture is messy and inconsistent, and doesn’t look computer-generated, holding a small object like this feels a bit like holding a sketch.
It’s pretty fun :)
There is something magical about seeing art I made digitally appear in the real world. I already get that feeling when I print my illustrations, obviously, but here it’s tenfold. I can turn it around, look at every side, hold it in my hand, and now it lives on my desk!
The artist who inspired me
Actually, the idea of making a paper house came from another artist I really like, Francisco Fonseca. Amongst many things, he also makes and sells papercraft houses that are actually quite similar to what I tried this time :)
His process is much more impressive though. He draws the pattern directly on paper and paints it before scanning it, cleaning it up digitally, and preparing it to sell. The result feels even more organic than what I made, and it looks stunning.
I didn’t look at his work while making this project, but I can’t deny that it gave me the idea in the first place. I want to give credit where credit is due :)
I really recommend watching the process video he shared on his YouTube channel. It’s fascinating stuff!
Watch Francisco Fonseca’s papercraft process
