thank you card, pop-up prototype

This is a Lem's Levity exclusive. You won't see anything like this anywhere.

This is the rough draft that experiments with which type of mechanism to use, the placement of things, their size, they way they work, how they move, the directions they move, the best angles to use, how they interfere with each other, how they fold back, types of tabs, their size and their placement, the placement of dialog and how the mechanisms stack and bulge when folded, how they all open.

It's all very rough and worked out on inexpensive card stock.

cover

The roof is a particular challenge. There are still a couple more options. I might decide to change this to standard origami box and glue it inside with these same tabs. There are several of those, see here, most have lids, or a drawer like a box for matches, or dividers, most do not fold flat. This one might work. 

Something similar to the table used for the Meerkat Thanksgiving dinner will work. 

I like this for showing what a mess things appear when the card is first opened. 

Here, the square box and the lid are two separate mechanisms. A three-legged table inside the box that shoves the lid up and spreads it , and another is the square box that slams down around it around the spreading tabletop lid. The two are not attached to each other.

A band mechanism creates a bridge across the central fold creating two new creases that behave the same way at the line were the band is glued. 

In pop-uppery the central fold of the card is the workhorse that creates all the rest of the movement. Most simple cards have everything happen directly on the central fold. More elaborate cards build out from that using creases as if they are the central fold of a new card attached to the content. Some constructors are particularly clever with this. 

Both mechanism for the box work directly on the central fold. The band gets content off the central fold, doubling the work area to both sides.  Although it would work for all three figures to pop up on opposite sides of the central fold  using one mechanism that spans it, using a band as a bridge merely separates them. 

Top view of the lid still folded tucked inside the box with the figures still not popped up around them. The band peaks on the right. When the card is opened flat, the band/bridge is flat with card with the band's crease directly over the card's central fold. 

The figures placed on the band do not pop up↑ until the card is almost fully opened  ↓. 

Come on, that's funny!

Because it's just so stupid. 

All that for just that. It's what makes it so hilarious. 

And the figures are just dumb.

Who wouldn't get a laugh out of that? 

This is the back.