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Creative Projects / History of Q'uaksnatic Papercrafts
« on: November 08, 2020, 08:23:16 am »
Hi there, Bay Watchers!
In this thread, I would like to tell you about my papercrafting history. I think it's pretty interesting to look back at your artistic roots and see the evolution of your craft, so that's what I would like to do here, as well as to dive deeper into the origins of my DF +Papercrafts+ project, for it is pretty unique amidst all my work, and every single figurine there has a story behind. Let's begin!
In this post we'll map my journey from the very beginning to right before I started making DF-related papercrafts.
In this thread, I would like to tell you about my papercrafting history. I think it's pretty interesting to look back at your artistic roots and see the evolution of your craft, so that's what I would like to do here, as well as to dive deeper into the origins of my DF +Papercrafts+ project, for it is pretty unique amidst all my work, and every single figurine there has a story behind. Let's begin!
In this post we'll map my journey from the very beginning to right before I started making DF-related papercrafts.
Spoiler: The Origin Story (click to show/hide)
The tradition of making papercrafts is rather old. I can remember having custom cutouts when I was like three years old, in a large cardboard box, now lost in time. Inspiration came mainly from magazines, often having some paper set coming part after part over multiple issues. But these pre-printed things made me often frustrated, it was too complex for me, and I hadn't the patience to bend every single piece perfectly, then carefully glue it to another in perfect angle. So I stuck to my own creations.
The Vault of ancient wisdom. Papercrafts are stored in various tea boxes, depending on the era they were created in.
I rarely thought of something original, until the conception of the frog universe. Before that, video games were the source of inspiration. My papercrafts could be divided into "eras", I was creating a set of figurines inspired by one particular game for a long period of time, using the same methods. I will go through the most lengthy and important eras here, and the oldest one I can remember were figurines based off Warcraft III. And there was a lot of them.
Some nerubians, elves, a boar and a skink, peasant and villager, and a troll witch doctor ward.
Most of the time I tried to make exact copies of the units in the game, from time to time making something unique. The greatest accomplishment from this era was a house for the villagers of Lordearon, I probably still have it somewhere. It was one room, with an openable wardrobe and few pieces of furniture, but it was a breakthrough at the time.
As you can see, they're all rather primitive, but despite that, this era brought the standard model for the figures:
Five pieces for the body - a chest, a head, legs from one piece - cut in half all the way to the crotch, and two arms. Everything body-related was rectangular or triangular, with sharp edges - round shapes were yet to be discovered.Accessories came usually in one whole piece too, such as weapons, shields, capes, and elven ears. For some reason, I glued the weapons on the side of the arm wrist should be. Colored by crayons exclusively.
I don't remember the age of these models, I think it could be 2009-2011, or something like that. It is definitely the oldest long-running set of mine, but it's so old I can't really remember anymore. I would return to the Warcraft theme from time to time, making new sets using advanced methods, but these were very short-lived and wouldn't produce much figurines.
The next prominent era would be models based on a MMO card game Berserk: The Cataclysm I used to play on Kongregate, before it mysteriously disappeared from there. Those should be from years 2012-2015.
Unlike the other sets, this one is in a shoe box. It shares the place with DF papercrafts and fox-fluff, and... A wire? Curious.
The evolution is apparent, markers are used for coloring, the models are more detailed and tops of their heads are round.
The next era wasn't that long, but it's something I am really proud of, and it serves as a midpoint in between the longer eras. It wasn't based on anything particular, yet inspired by everything at the same time. It was a certain card game of mine, with each card having it's model to be placed onto a board.
It all fitted into a tea box, so it could be easily transported.
You can see not only figurines, but whole squads and buildings, too! There were a six factions, if I remember correctly, one with ogres and giants, one based off ancient nations, a barbarian one, wizards, and slimes, I think... I have the original drafts somewhere. My goal was of course to make each faction it's own deck, but I hadn't created enough cards and figurines to make it possible, so all the cards were divided between the two players. Yet it was always pretty balanced and playable, something I wish to recapture with my board games to this very day
Maybe it's because it wasn't that long-lived project, I don't remember the exact ages of these models as well. They are definitely younger than the previous two, that's for sure.
The next one is the direct predecessor of the DF papercrafts, therefore a very important one. It is based on Illwinter Dominions series, strategy games depicting various cultures and mythologies fighting for their gods and spreading their faith. This one should be from years 2017-2019, and has probably the largest amounts of models from anything I've made before, for a reason you'll soon see.
Stored in a slightly larger box...
... Full of utter chaos.
The figurines here are the most detailed so far-decorated with pencil almost everywhere, with combination with markers, they're very shiny.
Regular units were made in squads of six, all together at one sitting, commanders were made exclusively. And there were lots of squads, I tried to make six of each unit and one of each commander for every nation in the game. Maybe the great variety was why I stuck to this for so long.
As you can see, the standard structure of the figurines stayed more or less the same, the shapes were only refined a bit over the time.
Two nations I actually kinda completed as I intended - Early Ages Vanheim and Rus.
This is the set I am returning to the most, setting up battles of cataclysmic proportions when I'm bored.
Here's a comparison of all the eras we've been through, with a match and Alle Dazelosric from the DF set. All of these are supposed to be human-sized, you can see they've been shrinking across the years. That's because the smaller the humans, smaller will be also the large things, be it dragons, giants, or buildings. Therefore, I try to make human sized so that I am able to reduce the size of the larger stuff as much as I can, but I am still able to make the smallest figurine in the universe the model inhabits. In DF, this becomes extremely important, as I need to potentially create something as small as a gremlin, or as big as a full grown dragon.
That's it for this post. Hope you found this interesting, and the next time, we'll take a look at the DF related stuff. Thanks for your attention!
The Vault of ancient wisdom. Papercrafts are stored in various tea boxes, depending on the era they were created in.
I rarely thought of something original, until the conception of the frog universe. Before that, video games were the source of inspiration. My papercrafts could be divided into "eras", I was creating a set of figurines inspired by one particular game for a long period of time, using the same methods. I will go through the most lengthy and important eras here, and the oldest one I can remember were figurines based off Warcraft III. And there was a lot of them.
Some nerubians, elves, a boar and a skink, peasant and villager, and a troll witch doctor ward.
Most of the time I tried to make exact copies of the units in the game, from time to time making something unique. The greatest accomplishment from this era was a house for the villagers of Lordearon, I probably still have it somewhere. It was one room, with an openable wardrobe and few pieces of furniture, but it was a breakthrough at the time.
As you can see, they're all rather primitive, but despite that, this era brought the standard model for the figures:
Five pieces for the body - a chest, a head, legs from one piece - cut in half all the way to the crotch, and two arms. Everything body-related was rectangular or triangular, with sharp edges - round shapes were yet to be discovered.Accessories came usually in one whole piece too, such as weapons, shields, capes, and elven ears. For some reason, I glued the weapons on the side of the arm wrist should be. Colored by crayons exclusively.
I don't remember the age of these models, I think it could be 2009-2011, or something like that. It is definitely the oldest long-running set of mine, but it's so old I can't really remember anymore. I would return to the Warcraft theme from time to time, making new sets using advanced methods, but these were very short-lived and wouldn't produce much figurines.
The next prominent era would be models based on a MMO card game Berserk: The Cataclysm I used to play on Kongregate, before it mysteriously disappeared from there. Those should be from years 2012-2015.
Unlike the other sets, this one is in a shoe box. It shares the place with DF papercrafts and fox-fluff, and... A wire? Curious.
The evolution is apparent, markers are used for coloring, the models are more detailed and tops of their heads are round.
The next era wasn't that long, but it's something I am really proud of, and it serves as a midpoint in between the longer eras. It wasn't based on anything particular, yet inspired by everything at the same time. It was a certain card game of mine, with each card having it's model to be placed onto a board.
It all fitted into a tea box, so it could be easily transported.
You can see not only figurines, but whole squads and buildings, too! There were a six factions, if I remember correctly, one with ogres and giants, one based off ancient nations, a barbarian one, wizards, and slimes, I think... I have the original drafts somewhere. My goal was of course to make each faction it's own deck, but I hadn't created enough cards and figurines to make it possible, so all the cards were divided between the two players. Yet it was always pretty balanced and playable, something I wish to recapture with my board games to this very day
Maybe it's because it wasn't that long-lived project, I don't remember the exact ages of these models as well. They are definitely younger than the previous two, that's for sure.
The next one is the direct predecessor of the DF papercrafts, therefore a very important one. It is based on Illwinter Dominions series, strategy games depicting various cultures and mythologies fighting for their gods and spreading their faith. This one should be from years 2017-2019, and has probably the largest amounts of models from anything I've made before, for a reason you'll soon see.
Stored in a slightly larger box...
... Full of utter chaos.
The figurines here are the most detailed so far-decorated with pencil almost everywhere, with combination with markers, they're very shiny.
Regular units were made in squads of six, all together at one sitting, commanders were made exclusively. And there were lots of squads, I tried to make six of each unit and one of each commander for every nation in the game. Maybe the great variety was why I stuck to this for so long.
As you can see, the standard structure of the figurines stayed more or less the same, the shapes were only refined a bit over the time.
Two nations I actually kinda completed as I intended - Early Ages Vanheim and Rus.
This is the set I am returning to the most, setting up battles of cataclysmic proportions when I'm bored.
Here's a comparison of all the eras we've been through, with a match and Alle Dazelosric from the DF set. All of these are supposed to be human-sized, you can see they've been shrinking across the years. That's because the smaller the humans, smaller will be also the large things, be it dragons, giants, or buildings. Therefore, I try to make human sized so that I am able to reduce the size of the larger stuff as much as I can, but I am still able to make the smallest figurine in the universe the model inhabits. In DF, this becomes extremely important, as I need to potentially create something as small as a gremlin, or as big as a full grown dragon.
That's it for this post. Hope you found this interesting, and the next time, we'll take a look at the DF related stuff. Thanks for your attention!
Still, I'll be trying to update the art for your better enjoyment, in which case, there will be both the original and reimagined option available, sadly I don't have much time for that aside of the common updates anymore. The text is getting revisions also, as my english was quite limited and blunt at the time, also to unify the tone, as that has naturally changed over time too. Hope you still enjoy. If the images are too tough to swallow, I'd say chapter 3 part 22 it takes a turn for the better, my attitude especially. At the beginning of each chapter I have added recaps of the previous one, so no one needs to suffer through the first chapters neccessarily. The chapter 4 does a lot of catching up on its own, too.
