The Download Munkey : Download This, Download That :)

Haven’t been recommending much papercraft apart from Shin Tanaka’s Spiky Babies these days despite the glut of excellent models being showcased at two of the papercraft blogs, Papercraft Paradise and Papercraft World that I visit quite frequently.

Today I’m proud to present Chris Beaumont’s cool Cubee Craft series, mainly for the fact that he has made one of my favourite 80’s cartoon characters, the cute fluffy Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from The Real Ghostbusters, into an equally adorable paper toy.

© Chris Beaumont

Chris has also transformed quite a number of other characters from popular culture into paper toys, ranging from games - Master Chief from Halo, anime - Salchiel from Neon Genesis Evangelion, to comic superhero Rockeeter and movies such as the iconic Imperial Stormtrooper from Star Wars. There’s even a limited edition paper toy available for download until 20 March 2008 to commemorate Nine Inch Nails’ new album Ghosts I-IV. What’s even more amazing is that these toys are designed as snap together papercraft without the need for messy glue and adhesives

© Chris Beaumont

Imperial Stormtrooper & Salchiel templates

Chris also promises a new paper toy every week, so it’ll be pretty interesting to see what he comes up with, especially when his inspirations for new characters come from such a broad spectrum of popular culture influences. I think a Pac-Man paper toy would be a cool addition to the series

Read about Chris and his Cubee Craft collection at Urban Retro Lifestyle which is a wonderful place to visit if you’re into urban art, designer/vinyl toys and other cool stuff (who isn’t )

Download your very own Cubee Craft paper toys.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Shin Tanaka’s Spiky Babies Deluxe Series
Papercraft Paradise
Papercraft World
Gundam Papercraft Downloads

A new series of the adorable Spiky Baby paper toys by Shin Tanaka is ready for download This set of Spiky Babies is the largest collection yet with a total of 38 designs illustrated by artists and graphic designers worldwide.

© Shin Tanaka

My top nine in ascending order.

© Shin Tanaka

Terry’s Factory - Reminds me of a Chinese zombie aka Jiang Shi

© Shin Tanaka

Bshit - Love the smiley face with the eyepatch

© Shin Tanaka

Hariken - A nice depature from the usual cute designs

© Shin Tanaka

Akira’s Factory - Love the colours and the multiple eyes

© Shin Tanaka

Akishi Nishida - Mmm… Watermelons

© Shin Tanaka

Kazuhiro Hino - Reminds me of the masks worn by Luchadores (more masks & luchadores over @ deadlicious)

© Shin Tanaka

Koraters

© Shin Tanaka

Mochiwo - I think my dear thoo2 will love this one and the one below

© Shin Tanaka

Nekonoko

The rest of the Deluxe series below.














© Shin Tanaka

Oh yeah, even the box template is also available for download

© Shin Tanaka

As the templates are “blindboxed” and randomly chosen when you click on the Open a Box! button at the download page on Shin Tanaka’s official site, be prepared to click for a long time to collect the entire series (or use a Flash disassembler like Flasm - read my earlier introductory article on Flasm)

Download the Spiky Baby Deluxe Series toys.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Papercraft Paradise - A Paradise for Machine Papercraft
Spiky Baby Series 08
Spiky Baby Series 07 & Mask Hoodies
Rogue Status Spiky Baby Series 02
Papercraft World

Michael James’s Papercraft Paradise is another papercraft blog with an excellent collection of links for papercraft plans. Before you dismiss it as Yet-Another-Papercraft blog, check out the extensive collection of papercraft machines (amongst other papercraft) featured at this wonderful blog.

Below is a selection of ones I like (All images taken from Papercraft Paradise)

There are military papercraft like this destroyer above as well as WWII Imperial Japanese Navy submarines, …

WWII tanks like a US M5 Stuart light tank or a PzKpfw IV Ausf D, …

A paper version of a Ingram M11 with laser, sound suppressor & reflex sight, …

As well as machines like a Toyota Corolla that looks exactly like the one in Colin McRae Rally 2.0, …

Super=deformed (SD) stuff like Tiger tanks & aircraft (A Supermarine Spitfire perhaps?) and Gundams here and here, …

Even an iPhone, …

Heck, even a Sakai steamroller.

If you’re a papercraft fan, check out Papercraft Paradise.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Sega’s Tiger I Papercraft Model
Papercraft World
Gundam Papercraft
Zaku II Papercraft
Yamaha Motorcycle Papercraft

A gentle reminder to all collectors of Shin Tanaka’s Spiky Baby papercraft that Series 08 is available for download as of today.

© Shin Tanaka

As avid collectors of Shin’s paper toys already know, the downloads are completely blind-boxed which means you don’t get to choose which Spiky Baby to download.

After clicking for around 45 minutes, I collected a total of 16 designs for Series 08. 9 have custom graphic designs on them and 7 are adorned with a specific letter from the words SPIKY BABY. The Series 08 box is also one of the possible choices so you end up with a total of 17 PDFs (assuming there are no secret Spiky Babies in this series.

If I have to choose my favourite among the nine custom Spiky Babies, the Sluglife version would be my absolute favourite. The Fingerprints design is a close runner-up

  
© Shin Tanaka

Download your own Spiky Babies from Shin’s official site . (Click on the giant Spiky Baby Series 08 logo at the top of the page)

If you’re a aspiring graphic designer/illustrator, you can add your creative touches to the blank templates for Spiky Baby or the newer Mask Hoody and submit them to Shin. Who knows, maybe you’ll be selected and featured in Series 09 More details on that here.

If you can’t find the blank Mask Hoody template, I have downloaded a copy from Series 03 which you can download here but for the Spiky Baby, you will have to contact Shin directly.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
More about Spiky Baby and Mask Hoody
Papercraft World
Rogue Status Spiky Baby (Series 02)
Elphonso Lam - Artist / Toy Designer / Punk Rocker

Discovered Mr Shin Tanaka from the archives of Urban Retro Lifestyle, a paper toy designer who has generously offered some of his beautifully designed paper toys (the more collectable than playable type of toy) for download as templates in PDF format.

© Shin Tanaka

There are currently seven series of free Spiky Babies from Shin Tanaka. Only templates from [Series 07] can be downloaded as the older series have been sold out and cannot be downloaded anymore (You can still view the gallery of the toys in the other series to find out what you have missed out, though)

Here’s all the toys available for [Series 07].

© Shin Tanaka

I’m not sure whether series become sold out after a pre-determined number of downloads or after a certain period of time so do visit his website quickly at shin.co.nr and get your Spiky Babies before [Series 07] is sold out

© Shin Tanaka

By the way, there are also Mask Hoodies available for download too (Currently Series 01 to 03 are available). I prefer the Spiky Babies though - they’re much cuter

Another nifty thing about these Spiky Babies is that you cannot choose the template to download as the server selects a random template for you to download everytime you click on Open a box Feels like buying one of those Japanese toy capsules (Gashapon) or those boxed trading figurines/kits at China Square Central in SG. (BTW, there’s a pretty good SG Gashapon site @ www.gashaponrakuen.com)

&copy Shin Tanaka

The server chose Yok aka Mr Big Moustache for me. He looks like a sleepy-eyed version of the Pringles mascot

There’s actually a way to download the templates for Series 05 to 07 via Google Search after you download one of the templates - hint: the site: keyword will be very useful I’m not going to list the direct links here because I don’t think that’s very fair to Mr Tanaka. Besides, clicking repeatedly on Open a box to try to get the one you’re looking for is pretty exciting stuff ;p