A whole scene that pops up.

If you jab a a pencil or popsicle stick into a book, say near the center, open the book at the pencil, the pencil stuck in there stays up in the air, nothing actually pops up but it looks like it does because the pages on both sides of it fall flat.

I-bars elevate a surface, create a table or partial table or lacy table to good effect but like the stick, they merely fail to lay flat.

V mechanism.

This mechanism is different from those do nothing types, by transferring the energy of opening the page into lifting another page in a different direction. Lifting another partial page, by connecting on both sides in the shape of V. For demonstration the V is symmetric, when asymmetric then strange and unpredictable things happen.

My very first earliest drawing efforts were scenes. A circus. The whole deal. Tents swing sets playground implements and elephants. Impressions of bits of movies I saw without understanding a word of it, combat scenes with castles in the background and knights slaughtering each other mid and foreground, horses, fire, smoke, clouds, dust, chaos all around. Romans with crazy things on their helmets, all soldiers centurions, and WWII scenes with tanks on the ground and planes in the air. Those kind of scenes can be depicted this way.

The whole scene flips up at once. It's odd too, when opening the card it goes, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, bang, entire scene.

I moved these pages today, part of some thirty or so,  from an inactive site to a new blogger digs and thought, hey, this really does show it.

The tall piece is folded in half and holds the hawk flying above the troop.

The X5 piece Is much lower broad enough to cross the whole card but trimmed so it does not go all the way across and to different length for variety. The shape of the V is symmetric, but the lengths of both sides are not. The V can be longer on one side than the other like ✓.  

These are 5 bands cut straight across the sheet and glued on the back in the shape of a V. They will stand straight up because they were cut straight across. That makes for 90˚ upright when bent at the crease then bent in the middle into a V and the tabs glued flatly. When the card is closed these will fold reliably at 45˚ inside the closed folded card.

Cutting the strips in the shape of the V instead of cutting strips straight across changes the angle of the upright from straight up to leaning backward. If cut as a chevron and glued the same way they will all lean backward as one. They can be provided a roof and a whole new platform pops up, an entire scene can built on the platform and lift up, a tree can pull up and be part of a platform like this, an airplane, or bug can lift up and right off the page. In this case a bird will lift up and backward away from the viewer above the rest of the scene. 

[Conversely, if the strips cut into chevron aims up rather than down, then the mechanism will work on the page in the opposite direction. That is, content will lift up and off the page toward the viewer instead of away from the viewer as here, and sometimes that is a very good thing.]

Content. This is where we let our arts flow. If you are judgmental with yourself then nothing can happen. The thing that gets me over fear of being artistically insufficient is considering all the crap cartoons out there, not funny, not interesting, not well done, and they get paid. Come on. You keep saying your kid could do it, so just do it. 

That's my attitude. 

The tall post with the bird is in place. The short uprights ready to place. Slots cut so tabs can be glued to back instead of on top. It doesn't matter. The tabs can be drawn and painted and part of the background. It's just being fussy on a detail. 

Changed the uprights. Did not use the strips cut straight across. Psych! Cut new ones with broader tops, then cut waves into the tops for random hills or waves of grass. Why? Because I didn't want a straight line going across holding up the animals. 

There is an additional bit attached to one side without a corresponding half, that attaches to another on its own side so depends on it to be lifted. That is, the smallest upright in front is dead weight, it is not lifting. An animal attached to that will be dead weight too and must be short enough to fit in that corner when the card is closed.

Aw, just draw the little guys over and over and cut them out. They pretty much all do the same thing. That is what makes them so amusing. They are not all running around doing different things.

Although they could. 

Why not Egyptians?  They're later.