Origami is the gentle Japanese art of paper folding, of making wonderful things from paper. Papercraft also originated in Japan, is sometimes known as "pepakura", and is also the art of making wonderful things from paper. Both crafts use paper sheets as their medium, but that's where the similarity ends.
Papercraft is Origami on steroids, a means of creating complex replicas of extreme intricacy, of rendering the wildest outpourings of the mind in three dimensions. And unlike Origami, where the paper is kept intact, and is given shape simply through careful folding, papercraft models are created by cutting, gluing, and bending as well as folding. And some of these incredible models transcend simple replication of an object to become beautiful works of art.
So if you want to take up papercraft, where do you start? Well the good thing about taking up papercraft is that it is a cheap hobby. All that is needed are a few basic and easily obtainable items: paper supplies; scissors; a sharp craft knife and glue. Of course as you become more ambitious, you can add to this with paints, inks, tweezers, and anything else that you need to create the finished object.
An understanding of mathematics is crucial to the art, and the more involved the piece, the more elaborate the final creation, the more depth of mathematical knowledge is required especially in understanding of polygons.
So what kind of things can a practitioner of papercraft make? Quite frankly, the only limitation is the imagination and the limits of the paper as a medium. Futuristic battle robots, motorcycles, automata - where a paper mechanism is created that when operated gives movement to the model, even Japanese politicians have all been made!
But taken to the next level, papercraft can become an object of unbelievable beauty, something that invokes an emotional response, in other words, papercraft as a work of art. And these papercraft creations are found in art galleries and museums all over the world. Bert Simons make incredibly lifelike and ererie paper heads of himself and friends, Haruki Nakamura makes kinetic sculpture that takes paper automita to a new level, Brian Dettmer creates what he has called "book autopsies", taking old books and caving them into complex sculputure, and finally peter Calleesen takes plain white A4 sheets of office paper and by skillful cutting creates works such as a rising skeleton, that move out of the sheet into the third dimension.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg. And if you are interested finding more about this fascinating craft, then a simple internet search of the word "papercraft" will reveal a whole amazing world.
