Revolution - Life Cycle of a Drop of Water

Revolution - Life Cycle of a Drop of Water 

Top paper engineer, Helen Friel, incollaboration with photographer, Chris Turner and animator, Jess Deacon have created this short video depicting the water cycle using Helen's excellent pop up book designs.
Nearly a year in the making and shot in a continuous take, Revolution follows the cyclical journey of a single water droplet. So many brilliant ideas in one short film with a great message.
I love this clever use of pop up technology and paper engineering. We all love pop up books and the revelations they bring with each successive spread. There is something about the pop up that reaches into us and affects us.
Clever use of our sense of wonder and awe can really help get an idea or message home.



Helen has put together the most wonderful stop frame animation showing the making of Revolution. You can see all the stages in the creation of a pop up book and the paper engineering mechanisms behind them. Some of the very best pop up book and cards mechanisms and ideas shown here for your inspiration!

Template for a rotating pop up mechanism

A rotating pop up mechanism.

THis is a fantastic rotating pop up mechanism. Tricky to cut out and fold, so do try the easy version first! Here are the free pop up templates for the two rotating paper mechanisms shown in the video above.

Beginner rotating pop up mechanism

Advanced rotating pop up mechanism

Prof Yoshinobu Miyamoto

Prof Yoshinobu Miyamoto

Incredible paper sculpture, origamic architecture and paper engineering from Prof. Yoshinobu Miyamoto, architect, and teacher of architecture at the Aichi Institute of Technology (AIT) in Japan.

There is a good article about his work on the wonderful uponafold.com.au

There are many more exquisite examples on his Prof.Ym Flickr Pages.

Free Torus Template to download and make below.

Curved folds secret weapon!

Curved folding tool!

One of the best ways to make curved folds!  Yup, pizza cutter!

Check out the curved folding examples that were created with this pizza cutter!

Free Curved Folding Template here.

Jun Mitani - Paper Magician

Jun Mitani - Paper Magician

Jun Mitani: I’m an associate professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Tsukuba. My specialty is geometric modeling in the field of computer graphics. I have been studying algorithms and user interfaces for generating 3D shapes on a computer.
When did your fascination with origami begin? Did you fold a lot of origami when you were a child?
When I was a kid, I didn’t have much interest in folding origami, but in papercraft. I fabricated a lot of paper models, such as cars, ships, buildings, and animals, etc. by cutting and gluing pieces of paper. I felt that origami, just folding, was too restricted. On the other hand, I was enthusiastic about the computer, which my father bought when I was a first-year student in elementary school. As a fusion of two objects of interest, papercraft and computer, the theme of my Ph.D. thesis became a method for designing paper models with the computer.

Free Paper Alphabet!

This beautiful fun Free Paper Alphabet from the wonderful Paper Toy as the very first post on my new Pop Up Paper blog!
Do go and check out Paper Toy, they are amazing source of incredible free paper toys.
They have an huge selection of free paper toys, 1369 at the moment! WOW!
Love Paper Toys!
This paper alphabet is so cute!