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So after chesh gave me the what’s-what on the fate of the Cubecraft site I mentioned in the previous pants-wettingly excited post about finding a papercraft Dr. Venture, I poked around and discovered a papercraft model that I thought would not only be of interest to me, but would be precisely my speed: slow and simple.

As a (late to the party) fan of Portal, the Weighted Companion Cube model seemed like an obvious choice. I only have access to a black and white printer, so I wanted to start with something that did not require any complex re-coloring on my part. That way, if or when I made massive mistakes in the cutting or folding phases, I wouldn’t really lose much in the way of time-consuming coloring work.

So, without further ado, my first papercraft (and cubecraft) model (and walkthrough)!

1. I clicked the download link for the Weighted Compaion Cube image from cubeecraft.com, which opened up a large JPG version of the model.


the page to get the file

2. Next I hit print to update my printer settings. [File > Print > Options tab]


Printer settings dialogue box

3. • I set the paper type to “Letter” or 8.5×11 for standard paper size, set the orientation from “portrait” to “landscape” and set all the page margins to .25 inches.
   • Optionally, you can uncheck the headers and footers as I have done here. I would recommend it to avoid any meta info from printing over the design.
   • Note of Caution! For Ubuntu’s print settings, I had to set the following options: UNCHECK Fit to width. Set Scale print to 60%. My Windows-based printer settings were already configured to fit the image, so all I had to change was “Portrait” to “Landscape”. If you have the ability to print preview, I recommend doing so to avoid wasting paper!
4. Next step was arguably the most challenging of all, cutting it out.
   • I used a retractable razor blade (box cutter) and my pointed tip, super sharp scissors I got years ago for Home Ec (and they’re still really sharp!). See these for something similar: Fiskars Razor Edged Scissors 8
   • I set the sheet on a solid surface that I wasn’t afraid of scratching up and cut the white slits on wide tabs A-G. If you prefer, you can cut the tiny gaps underneath the the smaller tabs A-G. I just used my scissors to carefully cut along the edge on each side, then pulled gently to remove the paper from in between.
   • Cutting around the rest is easy, just follow the outline and take your time! All-in-all it took me maybe a half hour to 45 minutes of slow, careful cutting to follow along the edge and get into those couple of tight corners around tabs A, B, E, and F. I went slower partly because my scissors are so sharp, it would have been easy for me to slip and cut right through the image!
5. Once I had it all printed out and cut out, the fun part – the coloring – started! A few notes on techniques I used to manually color my cube:
   
   

   all cut out and tarted up!

   • To outline the heart, I used Uniball Vision Elite pens, specifically, the dark magenta/pink one from my pack. I don’t think that link QUITE matches what I’ve got, but I left one pack at work and the other is Frith-only-knows-where in the house. But I digress.
   • To fill in the heart, and the lines radiating from the center circle, I used Sharpie Liquid Highlighters, which I never have enough reason to use, although they are pretty awesome and last for-freaking-ever. Plus the fine edge on the highlighter was perfect for filling in the narrow lines in one short stroke with no mistakes.
   • To darken the “inset” areas, the circular area outside the heart circle and little nitches between the edge pieces, I just used a regular pencil. I tried to fill in each quarter with quick up and down strokes in one direction, slightly rushed so the spacing would provide a bit of a brushed metal look from the little gaps of lighter grey between pencil strokes.
   • To fill in the edge pieces, I used a silver Sharpie. A word of caution on this, you should scribble on a blank sheet (or the unused portion of the printout) to make sure it’s a writing with a shiny silver color. If it’s dull or dark, it needs to either be stored tip side down for a while, or written with until the metallic color starts showing. Otherwise, you’ll end up with an inconsistant finish, or have to double up on your coloring (like I did), which will lose some of the subtle shading effects that show through from the printing with one light pass. Use smooth, even, overlapping strokes, as the gaps and edges will be VERY obvious with this method.
6. To fold it, I started with the cube edges. Then the insert slot tabs, then the other tabs.
7. The order in which I inserted the tabs: A, B, E, F, C, G, & D.

Finally, the finished cube!

shiny!

The bottom with the credits and the date of completion

For all my talk about papercraft, this was the first real papercraft I’ve done outside of paper chains, origami cups, and the occasional botched snowflake. This was a lot of fun and I may start doing a lot more of these. If assembly tips and papercraft modification ideas are something you’re interested in, let me know and there may be more posts like these in the future.

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