Recoloring made easy

I decided to make a recolor tutorial since lots of members are complaining that it's so hard to make a recolor. But actually, it's one of the easiest things to do. That is, if you don't have to change any textures, but just the color. In this tutorial I will show you how to recolor a papercraft within a few minutes, without messing up the textures.

Clicking on an image in this tutorial will enlarge it. Note that I use the Mac version, so lay-out of the program might look slighly different. The actions should be the same on PC.
This should also work in Photoshop, but the interface will be different. I haven't tested this in photoshop yet.

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First, you'll need the free program "Gimp" which can be downloaded here for free.
Install the program, and fire it up! You will have 3 windows. One with tools, one where you can drag files to (when using the newest Gimp) and one layer-window.

Step 1
Open the papercraft you would like to recolor. In this tutorial, I'll be using ddi7i4d's Kirby. I only want to recolor his body though, and not his feet.

Click on the Lasso Tool (see picture) and roughly select the part you want to edit.

Well, that was easy, right? You should see walking ants now. That whole area will be selected. Now Gimp will only perform actions within that selection.

Step 2
Now go to the Layer window, and click on the "new layer" icon (shown in picture).Press Ok when a dialog pops up. (you want the layer to be transparant) If you can't find the layer window, click on 'dialog' at the top and then click 'layers" (or press ctrl+l)

Click on the color-square to change the color you are going to paint with. After you found the desired color, click on the Paintbucket (shift+b) and fill in the selected area. Note that you have to paint on the new "empty" layer.

Step 3
Set that layer to "Hue". This will make the papercraft the desired color. I will call this the "hue layer" from now on. However, it still looks a bit dull. We will fix that later.


Step 4
Now, because we just roughly selected our kirby, the mouth and eyes are yellow now too! Select the eraser tool, choose a fuzzy brush from the brush pallet and then start erasing the stuff you want to have the old color on the Hue layer. If you accidently erased too much, just hit "ctrl+z" or paint over the layer with the paintbrush tool with the same color as you used before.

If you are familiar with Gimp/Photoshop and it's functions, I suggest using a layer mask instead of actually erasing it.

Step 5
Remember I said the color still looks a bit dull? Well, We'll be fixing that now. copy the Hue layer and set it to "burn". You might want to change the opacity of that layer a bit. I used 50 opacity for the kirby, but adjust it however you like it best.


Step 6
The most important part:

When saving, just type .png after the filename, and it will automatically save as png. when you don't give any extensions, it will save as .xcf, which is only readable by Gimp. This format will save all layers, so it might come in handy if you want to recolor the same papercraft again. However, this tutorial makes recoloring so easy that you don't really need it with this particular job.

Some final notes:
-It doesn't work when making a model black or white. You should change the recolor layer to mode "color".
-You might want to try the tool "colorize" instead of painting some color on the selection with the brush. You can find this tool in the menu "color" and then "colorize"
-When recoloring more then one page, you might want to turn the different .png files into a PDF file. On a Mac, you can use the free program PDFlab. Maybe the PC users out there can tell us about a free program to do this on Windows?

Got stuck? Ask away on the forum topic

What materials to use

I'm having a LOT of questions about how to build papercrafts, so I decided to make a guide and put it on the blog. This guide is merely a guideline, and not neccessarily the perfect papercraft equipment. Try to experiment with things like paper to see what you think is the best.

What I use:

-A printer with separate ink cartridges for every color*
-Cardstock. Anything heavier then 120gms should do, but above 170gms it's getting rather thick.**
- A small pair of scissors***
-A knife+cutting mat***. You don't want to ruin your moms desk after all
-Glue. Any fast and cleardrying glue will do. I personally use PowerPritt universal Gel.
-Toothpicks. You'll need these to apply the glue
-A pair of tweezers. You'll really need these for smaller parts.
-A scoring tool. Not really neccessary, but does make better folds. You can also use an empty ballpen for this. Just make sure it's really empty.

*If you're serious about this hobby, you might want to consider buying a good printer. They aren't too expensive now a days, and a printer with separate cartridges will save you money in the long run. If you only have one cartridge for all 3 colors and one color runs out, you'll have to replace the whole cartridge even though 2 colors are still full.

**Some people prefer matte, some prefer glossy. I myself prefer to build with matte, but some papercrafts are nicer with a glossy look, like golden items. Note that glossy paper is heavier most of the time. When your building smaller models, you might want to use lighter paper, and when you're building a bigger model, you'll probably want some heavier paper.

***Some people prefer scissors, some people prefer to use a knive. I've seen beatiful crafts created from both methods.It's for you to find out what you like most. Still, some parts are just easier for either scissors or knives. Make sure both your scissors or knives are sharp. A dull cutting tool will make horrible cuts.


And a small tip: keep your (unfinished) crafts in a safe place so that you/others don't accidently damage them.

I'll post more tips later.

Ripping N64 Models

Now that the forum is growing, we've had more and more people ask the question: "How can I rip models and turn them into papercrafts?"

In response to this question, I created a video tutorial of how to rip from N64 games. Enjoy!

How to Rip N64 Models from Tim Sanders on Vimeo.

NOTE: I gotta say some things. First of all, any models you rip are still owned by Nintendo, so no matter what you use the models you rip for, be sure to give credit to them. That also means that you can't use their models for commercial use.

Second, like I said in the video, if you do not own the original copy of the ROM you are using, you can only use it for 24 hours. After that, it is stealing (which is illegal). I do not in any way endorse or approve of piracy.

EDIT: Good news, the latest version of Blender (version 2.48a) has a built-in WRL import script! Now, all you need is the latest version of Blender, Python, 1964 and Lemmy's Plugin. You no longer need the VRML Plugin, mxTextTools, or SimpleParse.

How to Edit a n64 model into suitable papercraft Format

There have been a lot of failed papercraft because people don't really know how to edit n64 models into suitable papercraft, so I decided to make a tutorial! You can download it here.

Resources that you will need for this tutorial include Blender, Pepakura, and a basic Image-editing program.

Oh, and the hyperlinks in the tutorial don't work, so you have to download the program

-Red Yoshi