Wintergreen

For my third year project in fine arts i decided to completely screw myself over and go for a project i've been wanting to do for a wee while, and make a comic! Of course, naive past-me also thought it would be a good idea to papercraft it, so now I am quietly dying while i try to make this poor thing float.

Anyway apart from the sheer workload, it's been really fun!


The story follows a girl named Merriall as she travels around her rainbow gradient of a world in order to find her way back home.


Here are a couple of the characters (Merry, June):



And here are a couple of completed pages, though not in a terribly visible format.



I plan to get a reasonable buffer up, photograph them all properly and then post 'em online. In the mean time i'll occasionally drop bits and pieces into this thread as i make them :>

This... this is incredibly awesome.

Yeah, that's some really nice work. I can only imagine how much work it is to papercraft a whole comic, but wow it looks great.

just gonna...sit here...and gape.

*btp gapes*

plaid you are going to make me cry this is too great

PAPERCRAFT OH GAWD IT'S GLORIOUS
How do you even scissors
Guys I think
Laser fingertips that's the only explanation but ok wow this comic looks mucho amazing and the name you chose is awesome (I recall chemistry classes wherein wintergreen oil and salicylic acid and stuff those were the times)

The thought crossed my mind that papercrafted dolls could be made with joints so that they can change positions and be reused, but if you're actually making an entire papercraft book, that can't happen. Yet it's so much more rare and authentic that way. @-@ You've got enough dedication to create something truly magical, here.

Scissors are the devil .___. They bend the paper. I use a scalpel! :>

Jointed paper dolls are fun to make, but i have yet to work out a good way to keep the joints together short of making my split pins that aren't as obnoxiously large as the ones you can buy here, since i generally work pretty small. Something to look into anyway, because they'd be pretty useful for making animations i think.

Thank you for all the positive feedback, guys!

Jointed dolls for anything would be pretty limiting, in my opinion. Unless you plan to have lots of dialogue which i assume you won't given the format and for some reason it just looks like the kind of comic that doesn't feature a lot of dialogue.

Anyway, this is astounding and i'm pretty psyched to see more progress, i might even ask for your e-autograph before you go super popular with this, Plaid.

They'd be useful enough for stop motion, but not for a comic like this, no.

Wintergreen is also going to be completely silent! I've made up some symbol substitutes for the English alphabet so there will still be some writing on signs etc so it's not too weird, but the characters won't speak visibly. They mostly speak different languages anyway, so it's commenting on that [long and boring blah full of fine arts jargon].

Oh right, a paper knife xD Makes sense. Also, I'm looking forward to seeing how the different languages are portrayed!

For jointed dolls for stopmotion, how about just using thread? Poking a hole through where the stuff is joined and then tying a lil thread around it? Or if the string is thick enough, maybe putting a big enough knot on either side of the holes would work without tying around the joint?

That is a really good idea :O I shall give it a try.

What tools does one need for papercrafting? ...Well, paper, obviously, but does it need to be a certain kind of paper? Things like that.

I just thought of another way! You could cut little spirals of paper or carboard and slip the end through the hole then turn it until a good length is on the other side of the hole. Kind of same idea as a paperclip? Dunno how to properly describe this idea. x-x

And I think any paper is fine. I have a couple little booklets full of chinese papercrafts (my dad brought em back from china once) and the paper they used was really thin!

Here is all of my equipment:



Of these, the only things you really require are a pencil, and eraser, a knife and the glue(and paper of course). I also have carbon paper (the black sheet of paper) which makes tracing my drawings onto the proper paper a bajillion times easier, and i kind of need to do it that way to make sure the comic panels are all the right size etc in relation to each other, since i draw up a template on some separate paper first.

The blue paper is cardstock, which is what i use 99% of the time! it's nice and thick and holds it's shape well, in addition to coming in a variety of colours. I also use scrapbooking paper for patterns and i used tissue paper for some clouds in the page i just finished. Anything goes, really :>

Under that is a regular mechanical pencil to avoid sharpening forever and my knives. I use the larger one for precision work because it handles sharp turns better even though it's likely to snap, and the small knife goes through the paper like it's butter so i use that for outlines. There's also my glue bottle, which has a special tiny nib which I'm 99% sure is the end part of a mechanical pencil :B

I also have special tweezers with what are essentially two needles as the tip to pick things up (handy for working as small as i do). I have stabbed myself on them so many times it's not funny, vs once ever with my knives.

Under that, your standard eraser and metal ruler so it doesn't get sliced up by my knives, and adhesive foam squares which give it a bit of depth. :>

edit: oh and the cutting mat! My one is a3 but the one pictured is one of the class ones. It's huge which is great but the surface is a lot harder than my one and it's eating through blades like crazy. >:l

Whoa, never realized what benefits a softer cutting board could have.
Presently imagining your house populated with paperchildren.

Beep boop working on pages



(They are not in order)

And here are a few in order (but still not quite finished).



I've only got... 9 weeks to go, i think? at which point i'll have photographed 'em all. I think that'll be when i start posting pages properly online.

edit: i lied; it's 11 weeks till class ends.

She's being followed by golden sheep! Too cute! XD

They're actually lime green! it's a little hard to tell compared to everything else though, haha.

Lime green? Seriously?
That's a strikingly effective optical illusion, then? Or your camera isn't getting the colors right? Sure looks golden to me...

That was taken by my cellphone, so yeah. Colours not always the best. It's also up against a bunch of blues and teals!



Here it is vs some actual golden yellow paper, and some blue. It's definitely a very yellow green, but it is green.

UTENSILS?! ..L-LAMB CHOP? XD But it looks pretty!

In between working on pages I'm trying to get figured of the main characters done to use as reference.

The fellow on the left is Cassidy, a rather wealthy blue fellow. On the right; Merry again. :>

The center's June, right?

Indeed! My favourite minor character.