Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Halloween Animation

Check this out!!!



James Fritzler and his children made this super-sweet animation using Pose Monsters, a Halloween paper doll-themed toy I've been slowly working on. This is a very small, retail-only experiment and has been local to Durham, NC, but I made sure that James got a special delivery. Seeing this video is amazing, and I hope you too are inspired to create easy stop-motion animation using any simple stop-motion animation-enabling program out there, like the one used for this video!




Monday, October 20, 2014

Poplocks Fun at Durham Arts and Student U


Halloween turns out to be a time for Poplocks fun, and thanks to the Durham Arts Council, I was able to host 4 creative art events using my new Pose Monsters paper dolls. Each monster is made from 2 sheets of laminated paper sourced from the Scrap Exchange here in Durham, NC.


Skeletons, Spiders and Pumpkin Scarecrows were assembled and decorated and here is the picture proof:

Popping perforated parts out of the page.


Monsters on TV!


Super cute monster transformations (made mostly from spiders!)

The horrifying Monster Tooth and the Pumpkin Thief


Thanks to Lauren at the DAC and Alex at Student U for allowing me to host such fun building events.

Tuesday, October 14, 2014

Godzilla Monsters

King Ghidorah


Splat Space is a great place for engineering builder types to meet up and show others what they have made. A good friend, William McIsaac, has been making a bunch of awesome Poplocks paper toys of his own design and with his own innovations.

Face-to-face-to-face-off!

Tonight, William brought by his latest Poplocks monstrosities, paper depictions of some of the giant beasts from the classic Godzilla movies. His designs use tons of cool, new custom shapes, depicting great details from each monster. King Ghidorah is made using modified parts from Snake-bot, using a bunch of body segments to make neck, arms and legs super poseable!

Clean-up crew, for after the big monster battles
Thanks for sharing, William! I can't wait to show off more of your work.

Tuesday, October 7, 2014

Scrap Exchange Grand Re-Opening

Scrap Exchange is one of Durham, NC's most interesting, long lasting institutions. When shopping at Scrap Exchange, you will find all sorts of fascinating odds and ends, donated by businesses and individuals in the area. Scrap recently moved to a new location, and on Sunday, October 5th, a grand re-opening event was held, with food trucks, art, make & take, raffles, music, and a marching band!

We set up a Poplocks Make & Take table - many children came by to learn how to create simple flying toys of all varieties - Vortex Flyers, boomerangs, whirligigs and flying disks. I challenged some young builders to a gliding wing papercraft - starting with a simple non-flying paper airplane. One young woman made the most stable glider to date - stay tuned for the design instructions (so you can try your own modifications for better flight).



I also had homemade kits for sale at the event. I plan on having these for sale through the website soon, so stay tuned!





Thanks to Allie for helping out at the table all day!



Pocobot's Bigger Brother


Herbert K has built a new version of his branch of the Pocobot tech tree - "Altobot Evolved". Each arm and leg now has three points of articulation, making this the most pose-able mini-bot I've seen in quite some time!

Just as Herbert has done, you too are free to modify and build your own versions of just about any toy pattern from Paper Poseables. I would love to see "your" design next!




All three of Herbert's modified Pocobots. A robo family!




Monday, September 22, 2014

CenterFest Kids Zone

Saturday and Sunday were the 40th year of CenterFest in Durham, NC. CenterFest is an arts festival where craft, music and performance come together for two full days of creative fun. I was fortunate to find a spot in the Creative Kids Zone, where families could drop by and start building with Poplocks right away. I was amazed by the ingenuity that bloomed, usually in the form of flowery bracelets and headbands, airplanes, or even larger projects of notable size.

Check out some of the awesome creations, from young and old first-time builders below, by clicking on "Read More."

CenterFest was a great time for playing with paper. I will definitely participate next year. Thanks to Lauren, Janet, Shana, Erin, and the volunteers who came by to help at the table.



Don't forget to see the rest, click "Read More" below:


Thursday, August 28, 2014

Mach-Kaw



My good friend James has produced another incredibly pose-able and playable Netroid paper toy, "Mach-Kaw."

This aerial interceptor is very bright and will certainly make a scene. Maybe the Mach-Kaw you build is a trouble-maker (like most parrots), or perhaps your Mach-Kaw does swoop in to save the day.

Download and Build your own Mach-Kaw from Netroids Universe (www.netroids.net).

Poco Bot Out for a Walk




Robots tell different stories when they have different bodies. The new Poco Bot custom by Herbert K now finds itself outside, exploring the wide-open world.

"It's scary standing up this tall. I could fall down any second!"
"But I'm going to do it! I know I can walk tall!"
See? I can step up on this rock now. Couldn't do that before.
Okay, this is kinda fun. I'll see you guys later!
Thanks Herbert, for sharing more excellent photos of your Poco Bot Custom! More to see soon!

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Cool Custom - Poco Bot Tall


This fine Poco Bot custom is by Herbert, who added even more pose-ability to thw little guy. Poco Bots of this size may need to be renamed "Alto Bots". Along with adding knees and elbows, Herbert also modified the face, the feet, and even included the Screw-in Axle Disk Joints from Sweet Robo and Facebot. Nice!

I've re-examined Poco Bots pattern and was shocked to see how much empty space there is on the page. In a new revision, I've gotten Poco Bot's parts to be enlarged to 110% scale and it all still fits on 8.5x11 and A4! I intend to make the new version of Poco Bot easier to modify for all of you enthusiastic builders! Stay tuned.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

More Free Forms at Durham Arts Council


Ah, the end of Summer Camp at the Durham Arts Council... but we were able to have a great blow-out Poplocks event, with new pieces for building and a bevy of new creatures, robots, and vehicles.

This was the first event where I brought larger Poplocks panels for young builders to use. Frequently, many builders try to make a larger creature or vehicle, and it can be tedious to cobble together many small pieces to produce one ugly, prickly piece that is hard to decorate with markers.

You can find some of the pieces in the Poplocks Free Forms downloadable PDF - just click on the big "Free Forms" icon to the left. Print them out and card stock, and make sure to buy a 5/8" circle hole punch from your favorite art supply store.

As always, I learn so much about how young builders choose to create with the blank pieces, and it's always amazing to see how much imagination goes into the decoration. Thanks for sharing all of your great ideas!

I've also learned a lot about what is easy and what is difficult. My future designs will take age and ability into consideration, and I'll be sure to create ideas and instructions that are geared towards, beginners, skilled builders, and master builders. I already know that everybody will have fun with Poplocks, but I want to be sure that frustration is knocked away to make way for the excitement of building anything one wants to.

Thanks again to Ms. Willa the munificent educational TV star and Christina King, DAC Summer Arts Camp Manager. This was yet another great opportunity to see creative kids make surprising things!








Sunday, August 17, 2014

Engineer's Day at Life and Science


So many builders!

Yesterday was a great day at the Durham Museum of Life and Science. Robots, Snap Circuits, 3D printers, and all sorts of great technology for kids to try out for hours on end. Oh yeah, Poplocks too! I was able to run the biggest Poplocks Free Forms building table ever, over 14 feet of space for all sorts of building and creativity. Thanks to Joe Diver, Allison and the museum volunteers for making this a great event!

Along with the standard paper Poplocks, I was able to have a stack of plastic-laminated Poplocks to build the "Dodeca Ball", made from a new geometric-friendly piece design (which I also had the the Raleigh Maker Faire).

Dodeca Ball Instruction + a real-world build-progression.
So many young builders came by, so it's no surprise that there were a bunch of supremely creative builds. Just take a look:

Monday, August 11, 2014

Free Forms at Durham Arts

Well, this is the fourth post in a row where it's a gallery of kids creations from the Summer Campers at the Durham Arts Council. Today, I re-introduced Poplocks Free Forms shapes a new set of campers. The goal today was to give each artist the means to create whatever they could think of.

My expectations were met and then surpassed, as each camper became a skilled builder in minutes, and showed how much of a creative builder they could be in just an hour and a half!

Each camper was given a pack of parts and some Poplocks to start, though I told them right away that they could go to the big pile of parts and pull as many as needed to build as big or as strong as they wanted. Permanent markers were also supplied so that decorating could proceed straight-away.

I must say that today's decorated Poplocks explored territory I never considered - thank you so much to the creative campers for showing us what you can make! Some very young campers came up with a novel boomerang design that I will be sure to try out in future sessions!

See some of these images below:

So many different people!

Cute critters and cool flyers

The intermediate steps before color addition

Some campers made quite a collection!

Thanks to Christine and Brother Stafford for helping out!

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Super Saucer Fun at Durham Arts Council



I brought a new toy design to the Campers at the Durham Arts Council, one I knew would be a surefire hit - an easy-to-assemble Flying Saucer that really flies. This was a prototype kit, one that I plan to have on sale, and the campers eagerly helped me test the instructions, playability and customization properties. I could not have expected a better test-flight session!


This particular group was already made of seasoned building pros, having worked hard to master the E-motibot robots from Friday last week. The two piece Flying Saucer turned out to be less of a challenge, but hands raised in the air early on proved that my instructions were more confusing than helpful!



Thankfully, I was able to show the volunteers how to assemble both the saucer and the astronaut. Pretty soon, saucers were flying across the room  or were being decorated to the umpteenth degree. Take a look at some of these impressive builds!



Thanks again to Christina, Sara, all of the Volunteers and the Campers themselves for helping me test this design. Everyone had so much fun and I couldn't be happier!




Friday, July 18, 2014

Robots at Durham Arts



I had an amazing time at the Durham Arts Council today, and so did 22 Summer Camp artists! I brought prototype builds of Compass, Antenna, and Hammer to the afternoon session. Armed with an instruction sheet, I let the kids get to the building.

After some struggle (and hard lessons about making good instructions), the volunteers got everybody a finished robot to play with, even for the younger campers. Sadly, I didn't get a photo of every bot - my camera setting got tweaked and there were too many blurry shots - my apologies campers!



Once the bots were built, I was surprised, yet again, by how fast the robots got decorated with unique characteristics, patterns, and even names. Thank you campers - you helped to make this very fun!

Thanks also to Willa Brigham, Christina, Janet (for Sharpies), the volunteers and everybody else for their help making this a fun session.