When you’re stuck inside because the weather has gone from bad to worse, or when you’re looking for a cheap project for gift giving or just good old fashioned time consumption that actually isn’t looking at pictures of cats with captions, papercraft is great.

“Papercraft” is exactly what it sounds like: crafts made with paper. This includes things like origami, card making, and making paper models. Making paper snowflakes or chains of paper people? That’s papercraft. All those red and green chains made by gluing strips of construction paper into links? That’s papercraft too. Those little fingertip fortune readers? Yup, that too. Of course, those are all rather old hat, but that’s ok because the internet is here to help.

• It almost goes without saying that CRAFT and MAKE magazines are chock full of great ideas for any kind of crafting project, and paper is no exception.
• Fans of video games will be pleased to note that there are several resources for making paper models of all your favorite characters. Nintendo Papercraft is a blog dedicated to Nintendo-themed paper projects.
• Papercraft Museum has a pretty massive database of video game, anime, and film related projects in an easy to navigate archive, complete with downloadable patterns. They’ve also got beginner and advanced tutorials and a forum.
• 4chan’s /po/ board has a variety of papercraft (and origami specific, thus the o in /po/) projects, some of which are totally original. (I saw one there of DOG from HalfLife2 that totally blew my mind!) For any who aren’t familiar, 4chan is comes with an +18 plus disclaimer, because they do not restrict the content posted to the site. If you’re looking for projects with your kids, keep that in mind before you visit here.

So the resources for the projects are out there, but of course to build these things, you’ll need supplies. Below I’ve linked to a bunch of tools at Amazon (each under $20) that can help you get started. Things like small scissors for those tricky little corner cuts, a self-healing cutting mat, some regular and some paint markers, and an inexpensive (but really nice looking) set of x-acto knives. Having a few specialty tools will really help if you want to get into some of the more intricate projects, but nothing beats a regular pair of scissors, a (black and white or color) printer, paper, and glue if you just want to get started on something fun.

Paper itself is also a consideration! I strongly recommend recycling as much as possible, reusing all those misprint sheets with one or two lines on either end and so on. You can even recycle more heavily printed-on paper if you use paint or bold markers to color your creation after you’ve printed out the outline. If you’re interested in going tree-free with your paper projects, there are some vendors out there who can hook you up.

Card making and scrapbooking are a branch of crafting/papercrafting that are growing in popularity, and in a world full of boring pre-printed cards, nothing is nicer than getting a hand made original. There are positively TONS of resources available for card making tips, ideas and equipment, so I won’t bother getting into it here. However, I would encourage everyone to try to get creative with the things they have before going out and buying expensive card making supplies or equipment as some places may advertise. Old photo albums (especially if you usually get double prints), scraps of craft supplies, small junk drawer items, unused stickers, old magazines and things like that are perfect for a small project like a card. A co-worker of mine recently saved the heavy clear plastic backing from some big rolls of contact paper for card making and the results were really neat.

If you’re still not sure how to get started, PaperKraft has this handy papercraft for beginners video, embedded here for your enjoyment.

Happy crafting, everyone!

Bonus papercraft eyecandy! WebUrbanist just pulled together a great list of 15 really astounding artists who do all their work in, you guessed it, paper. Check it out!

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April Fools’ Day, one of the most loathsome and wasteful days the calendar year has to offer, has come and gone. Most everyone seems to have survived, thankfully.

DeviantArt, known for being a haven of artists producing works ranging from hackle-raising (no pun intended) furry fan art to really good photography, decided to celebrate this traditional day of asshattery by pranking all of its users. The accomplished this feat, not by Rickrolling everybody and their brother, but by taking care of exposing the masses to another already-mostly-expired internet meme.

For the duration of April first, all DeviantArt user pics were changed to a looping animated gif of a Mudkip, which displayed the phrase “so I heard you like mudkips??”. (Well, more or less anyway.)

A lot of people seemed to be under the impression that DeviantArt had been “hacked” by 4chan. A lot of other people didn’t seem to mind at all. Indeed some even seemed to embrace the siren song of the anime rendition of an axolotl forever om nom nom nom-ing in their profiles and various visited pages.

It was of course only a joke and DeviantArt returned everyone’s avatars to normal when it was April 2nd. April Fools’ Day was pretty uneventful for yours truly, I think I would have liked to have had a little omigod hax! rather than an entire day of waiting for someone to do something awful to me. Anybody out there get meme bashed or otherwise tricked this past April 1st?

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I found a great big PNG with instructions on how to make a papercraft mudkip! I found it on some random gamer forum, but it looks like it originated with someone from /po/.

If you get around to making this, be sure to share links to photos in the comments! Fun papercraft Pokey-mans for everyone! YAY. If that’s not your speed, here are two simple, adorable kitties that you can print and build, too.

Enjoy!

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Boy was it ever! I would explain it to you, but I barely understood it myself. For your listening pleasure, however, I’ve put together another mixwit mix tape that I feel helps express in very broad terms the kind of day I had.

Featuring

1. Kajiura Yuki – Key of the Twilight
2. Sonic Youth – Hits of Sunshine (For Allen Ginsburg)
3. Placebo – Bigmouth Strikes Again (cover)
4. Sebadoh – Too Pure (live)
5. The Tubes – White Punks on Dope
6. New York Dolls – Human Being
7. Tsunami Bomb – The Invasion from Within
8. The Distillers – Sick of It All
9. Howlin’ Wolf – Spoonful
10. New Radicals – I Don’t Wanna Die Anymore
11. New Radicals – Someday We’ll Know

I hope you enjoy it!

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I just want to apologize for any visitors who have actually gone to infinitedesu.com. While I feel as though I did provide fair warning when I originally linked it, I was looking at WPStats and couldn’t help but notice that people have actually clicked on that.

What you will find, upon visiting infinitedesu.com is the following: …nothing.
Apparently, I let the hosting or the domain or something expire. Could have sworn that auto-renewed. Well kids, looks like it’s technically up for grabs. If you buy it because you saw the name here, let me know so I can congratulate you on your refined tastes.

But if domain sniping isn’t your cup of tea, what you can do is visit RKNet’s new affiliate, TorsoPants. I came across their site earlier today and I was so impressed I decided that I had to be their friend. You can be their friend too, just tell them I sent you, ok?

There’s so much going for them: their site works in Opera without fuss, they’ve got all kinds of great design on the site, there are more hidden fun things than at a hidden fun thing convention, and I guess they’ve got good clothing, or something. I definitely spent a while at the site today, really just exploring all the things to see and do, and trying to decide whether or not I can afford to buy a pair of torsopants (which for those keeping score at home, is like a “shirt” only superior in every way) before I spend the money to renew Infinite Desu.

If I get the cash-money necessary to resurrect infinitedesu.com myself (hint), then I hope to achieve a similar standard of site awesomeness that I saw demonstrated by the proprietors of TorsoPants, instead of the old infinitedesu.com, which just had an annoying animated gif for a background, and the word “desu” over and over and over again.

I realize that some of my visitors may be coming here because they have no idea what the deal is with “desu”. I can appreciate being in the dark like that, and would like to take a minute (just sit right there) to explain a little more about what desu is and why I felt compelled to even buy infinitedesu.com in the first place.

Desu

Verb. Japanese form of the verb “to be”. Example: Watashi wa Amerika-jin desu. I am an American.

(aux) (pol) polite copula in Japanese; (P) [via Jeffrey's Japanese Dictionary]

Exclamatory. Taking a cue from a character named Suiseiseki featured in the 2004 anime, Rozen Maiden, people on the internet have come to use desu in excess. This is most often found in the form of the “desu flood” where by a post or entire thread is comprised of ONLY the word desu, repeated over and over again. It is the determination of Encyclopedia Dramatica’s shadowy editors that Desu is a classic meme. No other sources seemed to refute this.

And now…
Needs more desu!

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All this talk of Mudkips (and having to troll around Google Labs for something work related) got me to thinking, just how popular is this whole “mudkips” thing, and what about rival Pokémon meme, Seaking?
Well, the results are in!
The winner for longest running search item? Seaking.
Current most popular? Mudkips.
Overall though, I’d say the winner is Seaking by a huge margin. Fuck yeah, Seaking!

Although I couldn’t help but notice, when adding Slowpoke (Hey guys, am I late?), I got some articles too. Talking about some hybrid Lexus. Funky. In typical Slowpoke fashion, this search lags way, way behind the others. Fitting, really.

Search result totals (as of a few minutes ago):
Seaking – 1,110,000
Slowpoke – 624,000
Mudkips – 359,000 for mudkip, 122,000 for mudkips

Clearly, even though there’s a rise in popularity of the newer gen meme fodder, Mudkips, there is a serious lack of content for this topic. Although to be fair, I think Encyclopedia Dramatica probably has the subject covered well enough for us all. If you don’t know that ED is not safe for work then you haven’t been around the block. So I’ll tell you right now, that it’s not safe for work, and if you’re really very worried about that, then you should probably not go around the block. They do however have a link in there for a PDF on scientists’ attempts to study the development and regeneration of axolotls, which as we learned earlier today, are the closest thing we get to Mudkips on this side of our Quantum Reality Tunnel. Science will find a way though, it always does. Yay science!

Anyway, all of that was really just some blatent search related infoporn, exposing me for the meme-addled child I truly am. Do they have support groups for this kind of thing?

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Ok, not really. My good friend Kento over at Uglorable has composed an AMAZING compendium of obscure animals – one for each letter of the alphabet – entitled: Obscure Animal Alphabet: Axolotl to Zebu.

For letter A is the Axolotl, which HAS to be the inspiration for that internet famous Pokémon, Mudkips.
Exhibit A:
Exhibit B:
Sure there’s color differences, but that’s pretty minor all things considered.

As you go down the list, you realize that the creators of Pokémon were clearly influenced by nature itself. Sure, they take a lot of liberties, but in terms of creature design, it’s clear they went straight for nature’s bounty.

Even if you couldn’t care less about video games, Pokémon, or internet memes, I’d still recommend checking out this animal alphabet. Every letter is an adventure, there’s a photo of each unique animal, and a description of each one! It’s like Zoo Books, only awesome.

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Gentle Readers,
I am torn. Every year I say I am going to do something so unbelievably wicked awesome for halloween. Every year I flake out.

This year should be different. I have 2 ideas in mind. One involves a lot of money and would need to be done soon, one involves a lot of time and maybe a little less money and skills I don’t necessarily have.

Idea #1:
“Seaking-tan” – This idea would require me to come up with some manner of outfit that closely emulates the overall design concept of the Pokemon called Seaking. If you don’t know what Seaking is, you’ve been living under a rock. So for those under-rock-dwellers, see picture at left.
Pros: It has the potential to be awesome! It would be thoroughly unique, and incorporate one of my favorite Pokemon/memes at the same time. Done right, it would result in a really pretty costume. I can also do it however I see fit since it’s an impression and not an exact replica of an existing garment. By taking this approach, I couldn’t be labeled a fur-suiter.
Cons: It would require me to sew, which isn’t my strong suit. It could potentially be expensive if I shortcut by using some pre-made garments to save myself sewing work. I could totally screw up. Almost no one I hang out with knows the Seaking meme, or Pokemon enough to get what I’m going for, which would be a bummer.
See Also: DeviantArt Concept Drawing, and the “-tan” concept (as applied to operating systems)

Idea #2:
Suiseiseki – Yes I’m really that much of a weeaboo. Even though Suiseiseki wasn’t my favorite character from Rozen Maiden (I’m a Shinku fan, I admit it.), I feel as though I’d be more successful with attempting to acquire a Suiseiseki costume due to the character’s popularity.
Pros: I can buy pretty much everything I need off ebay, which saves the effort and intimidation of trying to sew something that complex. It would also be unique and awesome, given the predicted costumes of those I know. I adore the complexity of the Rozen Maiden costume designs. I could publicly desu spam as long as I want, or until someone punches me in the face.
Cons: Again, no one I know would get it. I couldget punched in the face. This costume has the potential to be very expensive, what with the wig, contacts, dress and accessories. I have no idea where to find the contacts or the wig. I am picky enough to want all the details to be right. I wear glasses to see and don’t know if I could get the colored contacts in my prescription.
See also: The picture above (click on it for full size, it’s hueg like X-box), the wiki entry on Suiseiseki, one of several ebay vendors selling cosplay supplies for Rozen Maiden

So there’s my dilemma. Weigh in and let me know what YOU would do in this situation. And hey, what do you want to be for Halloween?

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At Typorganism there’s a fascinating little tool that will take JPEGs sized 60×50 pixels and turn them into either letter or block style ASCII art in either color or black and white.

There are five sample faces you can play with to get a feel for what the tool can do: 3 male faces, one female face and one cat face.

There is also a picture upload option. I played with this tool for a moment and of course I had the perfect sample picture to test the tool’s limits.

I found the “Generate HTML” option slightly desceptive. Selecting this option with the color and square options will open a new window with a JPEG output of the Flash-generated image. Which is great for saving, but not “true” ASCII. However, if you opt for the letters option, this tool will definitely deliver!

Forgive the display, I can’t quite make it work the way I want. Below the cut to hide my shame.

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shhzzzs=--~...'~..'..'<+DDs=(((=zhz=sszhzhsz=+zz+-.'..'--'.'
hhzzzsz=''-..~~.<hs<ssDsshzhhDhhs===+++s==+++<=ssz=<==='---.
hzzzzzs<..'-~-'-zzsssss++====s==++=++++s++==+<+===ssshs.'-~-
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shshshs+=+++sz~<=+~+<=h<(+=<+shh<<h+==+s=h=+(+===<+z<<+<++<+
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Discovered in my del.icio.us RSS feed!
One more. Guess who!

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A good friend of mine just came back from this year’s PAX, and being the brilliant photographer that he is, captured a lot of really great images from the conference. There’s more to come, but this one really stuck out.

This fine young con goer had this Peach costume custom made just for him. Truly, gentle readers, what more can be said about this priceless moment?

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