A-Wing

The first attempt I made at an A-Wing used a dollar bill, simply because the long rectangle allows you to create a waterbomb base along the back for the fins with plenty of room to spare at the front to double back and use for the cockpit.

For whatever reason I seem to have forgotten what the heck an A-Wing looks like when I designed the first one, intent more on the idea of how to deal with the back fins and the cockpit than actually worrying about the details.

First attempt
First attempt

The finished model turned out much nicer, with the characteristic snub nose and straight wings without the rounded nose (like… say, a letter A?).

A-wing
A-wing

While they’re not exactly diagrams, I have my notes that include a crease diagram and a few details.

UPDATE (7/16/2017): I’ve refolded it and done step by step diagrams. The fold after you pop up the canopy pyramid is a bit tricky, but you can just massage it into a flat shape. It doesn’t have to be super precise as it’s all hidden below the canopy. If you’d like, you can play with the width of the canopy a little bit (the diagrams below use easy to find reference points, so it may be a little wider than the picture show above). If you’re using a dollar bill, you can use the picture as a reference.

Diagrams:

A-Wing Diagrams

Original Notes:

A-Wing Notes

Warthog

“When I was a young warthoooogggggg!” Sorry, had a flashback to watching Lion King over and over again as a kid. Anyways, here’s a warthog I designed. A lot of my designs around this point seem to be revolving around blintzed frog bases to get the number of points necessary to do complex shapes. Unfortunately, that means you have lots and lots of layers at the center of the paper. In this case, I dealt with that by creating a custom foil square (literally spray adhesive, aluminum foil, and tissue paper.

For the warthog, the huge number of layers actually gather together in the shoulder and head area, giving it a pleasing bulk. The thickness gives it a bit of a sculptural quality which works well in foil, but not as well with your standard printer or ruled writing paper.

Warthog

Diagrams:

Warthog Diagrams

George Washington TIE Fighter

Okay, so it’s not really George Washington’s TIE Fighter, but when you make it from a dollar bill, you can see George’s face in the cockpit area, so just roll with it on this one.

Darth Washington's TIE Fighter

And the diagrams!

TIE Fighter Diagrams

Anpanman

For me, living in a house with a toddler who speaks Japanese means a whole lot of two fantastic things: My Neighbor Totoro and Anpanman. So when I found myself with a spare circular frame from a broken mirror at work and a circular side table top slated for the trash, I knew what I had to do… paint an awesome flying Anpanman! The donut-ey action superhero!

Post Apocalypse Armor

What’s a college student to do when they have a stack of file shelf dividers, an old karate white belt, a rivet gun, and too much time on their hands pre-Halloween? Why build armor for a post-apocalypse orc costume, obviously!

Inspired mainly by pictures of layered armor, I created a series of overlapping rings a bit like a lobster’s tail using riveted-together shelf dividers. The torso hangs from a pair of shoulder straps made from an old karate belt. For the chest and shoulders, I created a V-shaped piece and then a set of overlapping guards for the upper arm.

Not content with a metal shell, I racked my brain for what I could add to it that would make it scream Mad Max! Lo and behold, I’m pulling off the freeway to head into the college when I see a shredded tire on the side of the road. Bingo. (Note to the wise: many tires actually include steel wires in them for structural support. These wires are very sharp. Don’t ask how I know.)

Once I had the tire bits set up in a V shape to go over the chest piece, I (literally) tied it together with the hubcap, onto which I spray-painted a cheery happy face. It matched the upside down vampire teeth I used for tusks and the green camo facepaint rather nicely.

Torso Front
Torso Front
Layered Torso Armor
Layered Torso Armor
Chest and Arm Armor
Chest and Arm Armor
Tire Shoulder Pads with Hubcap Decoration
Tire Shoulder Pads with Hubcap Decoration
Smiley Face on Hubcap
Smiley Face on Hubcap

Winged Beast

So this little buddy is pretty much a winged fantasy creature with a tail and a curved horn. Maybe not exactly a dragon, but something fun and weird.

Winged Beast

Diagrams:

Winged Beast Diagrams

Woodworking

I don’t do much woodworking, but I’ve had a special place for it ever since my dad and I built a tank and an aircraft carrier back when I was a kid. We stole a paintbrush from my mom’s art supplies to make the barrel for the tank, which I don’t think she was terribly happy about. Still, it was a fun little project that I treasure to this day.

Woodworking