daffodil pop-up prototype

I'm showing this so that you can do it.

Each element in the book that I showed you earlier can serve nicely as its own pop-up card. It's impressive how much the author gets out of so few and such simple pop-up mechanisms and how well he and his artist blend art with mechanics. Usually they're not this good together. The video is so thorough the method of construction can be discerned from the video. Except I was wrong about the last one.

The first page relies on three mechanisms used repeatedly. Primarily hexagon fences. Tall ones, another that Duncan Birmingham calls opening flower that's used to tremendous effect in wild and interesting ways. It needn't be a flower. I've seen it used effectively to show tiny portraits of characters in a story. You can imagine it showing a hand of cards. And third, a bridge that crosses the central fold of the book and sits flatly against the background with the same design so that it disappears. A new floor so that edges where it connects on both sides form new places where content can be attached. It folds in the opposite direction of the book. Without a bridge then all the flowers would have to be lined up with the central fold. This bridge across the central fold doubles the area where things can attached and it gets content places on it off center.

Anims and photographs follow.

Obviously, the hinges can be built right into stalks and into the hexagon fences. They don't have to be separate hinges.

The following is a prototype daffodil.

Three stalks hold up the daffodil. Two are built into the leaf hexagon fence. The central stalk is two glued together. It has hinges on both sides. 

The petals on top of the stalk is a flat surface that amounts to an inner card that works in the same direction as the background card and with its own hexagon mechanism placed on it. The leaves are a hexagon fence and so are the inner yellow upright petals of the daffodil. 

I made mistakes in scaling. The ones in the book are much better. I also learned not to use the leaf hexagon for the stem. Those can be kept separate.  Mine is to wide, its height predetermined so it's way too short and squat. 

Still, making the flower in paper, measuring, scoring, coloring, cutting, and glueing was easier and faster than making the animated gifs to show it. 

A flat bridge across the central fold allows two more flowers at its far edges of attachment. Two bridges allow four more flowers, as in the book. 

The bridge needn't be symmetrical. And it needn't be a single piece. It can be two pieces intersecting with slots. However lopsided off the central fold,  when held up and looked at straight on with the card opened halfway, as the animations show, the card and the bridge will form a rectangle shape, the asymmetry of the bridge mirrored on the opposite side by asymmetry of its placement across the central fold. This way the lopsided bridge can fold flat. Sometimes asymmetry is more interesting. 

Using these bridges means the content is placed closer to the edge of the page so they must be shorter than the content placed in the center. In the case of this book, the single flower in the center is shorter than maximum height so that its height matches the height of flowers on the bridge.