Free Halloween Paper Crafts

Time to get ready for Halloween! I want to announce our new Halloween paper craft and highlight some of my favorite sites out there that feature free Halloween paper crafts and paper models:

Spider Web Pie Halloween Treat Boxes
This is our offering for this Halloween. Simple to make,
Display on your Halloween party table, each one filled with treats. or hand out to Trick or Treaters at the door.
Our Models From Halloweens past: Halloween Pumpkin Box, Pumpkin Hat and FrankenPaper and Dracula Paper Models

The Printer Companies that I featured in my previous post have lots of very nice free Halloween paper crafts and models of all kinds.

Haunted Dimensions has some amazing Halloween paper models! They feature very detailed Disney Haunted Mansions, crypts, animated coffin and tombstones. Also, ScreamHouse and Psychoscareapy paper models from Univeral Studios Halloween horror nights. The paper models and site are designed by Ray Keim, a very talented artist and media designer. Besides the great models he offers there is an interesting article on how he created the Haunted Mansions. He also has instructions on how to make your own ginger bread Haunted Mansion!


Ravensblight Another great site that offers incredible Halloween paper toys! They offer Ghost House, a classic haunted house with very nice detailed artwork. Many scary Halloween paper masks. medieval helmets, coffin boxes, a mechanical bat, monster figures, clever pocket monsters, games, Ravensbight manor, a gothic chapel and lots more. There are lots of paper crafts that are ideal for Halloween party favors and activities. Besides paper toys there is Halloween stories, even audio stories, Music and short films all by Ray O'Bannon a very talented artist.

These are just two of my favorite places to go for Halloween paper crafts and free paper toys, you can find these and more here: Free Halloween Paper Crafts and Paper Toys

Cutting it close for Halloween 2006

For as long as I can remember there have always been 4 classic horror monsters, Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy and the Wolf Man (I wonder if I should have said Ware Wolf?). So far I have built busts and of Frankenstein and Dracula. I have also included masks of each as well. I plan to design both the Mummy and the Wolf Man, one this year and one next year. I believe that the die hard modelers want busts of both as soon as possible. But the busts take longer to design and test. Production is very slow and time consuming. The masks on the other hand, are quicker to prototype and that means that I can find the flaws faster. Which means I can make adjustments to the software version sooner and then build a new prototype sooner. And so the process continues until you have a new model to print. The masks are easier to build than the busts and so they are more popular with my fans who are less dedicated to modeling full time.

As I have said in a previous post, I have switched from Imagine to SketchUp just this year, so I have quite a learning curve to beat in order to produce a new model in time for Halloween. SketchUp has one great advantage over Imagine. (OK, it has LOTS of advantages but that is off topic.) In Imagine if I needed to make any change to the shape of the model, no mater how small, I had to do every step of the design over again. That means converting the model to .obj format, wrapping the texture map, and tweaking the texture map to fit the new model, before taking it to Pepakura, first to see if the texture fits correctly, then to unfold it. Now with SketchUp I adjust the model with the texture already attached, tweak in real time, then take it straight to Pepakura for unfolding.

My life in the real world is extremely busy this year but, I am still going to try my best to have a new model out in time for Halloween 2006. Although it pains me to say it, I expect that I will only try for mask and not a full bust. But you will have to wait to see weather it will be a Ware wolf or the Mummy.