Paper Toy Obsession

I can't remember exactly how it happened, but a few years ago, I stumbled across an artist called Jason Harlan.  His website promised illustration, papercrafts and fonts so I decided to take a look around.   This is where I discovered his Boxpunx collection and the wonderful world of paper toys.  The Boxpunx are awesome.  They are super easy to make, require absolutely no glue and completely satisfy my need for brightly coloured randomness.   Before I knew it, I had made a ton and covered every available piece of shelf in our flat.  So I started taking them to work and managed to fill up my limited desk space as well!!

The 'Paper Army' from my old office

There is an amazing amount of variety in the Boxpunx range - both in the style and in the designs.  There are nine series as far as I can tell as well as a whole bunch of templates for you to create your own!  Here are a few of my favourites:

You can find the full Boxpunx collection here.  Sadly there have been no new Boxpunx since about 2009 but there is plenty there to keep you occupied, I assure you.

Earlier this year, I found the Proudly One Sided paper toys at the Come Out and Play exhibition.

Created by Reghardt Grobbelaar, Proudly One Sided is described as:

"that explores the daily scenarios one would find in South Africa. Rather than following the stereotypical images, which are normally associated with the country, the project was approached in a lighthearted manner."

You can view them on the website and you can download the templates to make your own.  My favourite is Missing (the Cow-patterned one) and atm: the future of document creation.  I haven't made any of these ones yet but they are still hanging around on my To-Do list!

I haven't made a paper toy in ages and then I found the Adventure Time paper toys on the Cartoon Network site.  I have an obsession with Adventure Time that almost eclipses all others so you can imagine my joy at finding a combination of two of my favourite things!  You can get Finn, Jake, Marceline, Bubblegum and a whole host of backgrounds to set them up with.  The only thing that's not so great about these ones is you need to use glue.  I downloaded Finn, Jake and Gunter to try and they came out really well.  Despite the glue, they were pretty easy to make.

Anybody else out there share my obsession with paper toys?  If you do, feel free to share your favourites.  I'd love to find some new ones to try!