World of Warcraft

It's a video game.

That I don't care about.

The videos about the video game do not look interesting.

I saw a notification that Matthew Reinhart produced another pop-up book so I bought it without hesitation and without knowing anything about the subject. It was rather expensive. A million dollars for one book for pre-order, but I didn't care. Possibly $45.00. I imagined it would be about warcraft and probably about the whole world of it.

Reinhart would put the whole world of warcraft in a book that pops up. Because Reinhart is just crazy.

There is no other way around it. But now I know why. He's a military brat and all those kids are a little bit crazy.

Then as the release date approached I saw this .45 second video.

And that put me off the whole f'k'n thing.

I don't want a thing that spreads out over the whole dining room table.

The book arrived several days ago and I haven't even looked at it. I don't want to work at figuring out how to spread it and then put it all back together again.

Step 1: clean off the dining room table.


Now that the book is released so is another video. This time with Matthew Reinhart explaining his book.

Turns out, it reads as a regular pop-up book that can be spread out. And when you do spread it all out then one last pop-up becomes accessible that is not available until then.

Ew, I hate those tricky mices to pieces.

I'm glad he admitted not knowing anything about the video game before the company asked him to make a book for them because he made a Transformers book and stated he grew up obsessed with Transformers and I thought maybe he's just saying that to sell his own book. Turns out he really does collect them.

The following video elides over his "collaborating on other pop-up books" before striking out on his own. He set up with Robert Sabuda who is the pop-up maniac that preceded him. Now Reinhart has become even more maniacal. Now Reinhart does a full page pop-up with side-pop-ups underneath a full-page pop-up and on top of them. That is, he produces stacked scenes. As this video shows now he builds three separate pop-up scenes that collapse into themselves when the pages are folded.

Imagine what that takes.

The action takes place across the central fold.

That's why all pup-ups are built on the center of the page.

Except there are ways around this being so plain and goofy.

The mechanism must work symmetrically balanced across the central fold.

But the material built up upon the mechanism can be asymmetrically lopsided built up more heavily or extravagantly on one side than the other. So the whole thing doesn't look so simple.

Plus, you can put a short broad band across the central fold that folds the opposite way, that is the band fold upward when the card is closed. It forms a mountain where the card forms a valley.

At the edges where the band is connected then the central fold is doubled and displaced to the sides.

Material can be built up on these creases as if building upon two little cards inside the original card.

Like this: The dotted vertical lines are the central fold where all the action takes place.

Those three circles can be one larger castle built upwards that collapses into itself in pieces when the card is closed.

You'll have to sit there for a very long time and figure out how to do that, but this is where you could start.

But Reinhart goes further than this.

This entire page will lift up to reveal another world underneath it.

Or the main circle on the central fold will have a lid that lifts up to revel another floor underneath it with material packed onto it in this same fashion of material built up across the central fold.

Or all three layers; lid, normal card, and basement.

He's a freak.

He gets so carried away that we see on uploaded home videos that children have difficulty getting the layers to operate. It takes a bit of finesse to get them to work.

And all that is embellished with separate pop-ups along the sides that fill in negative space that standard pop-up mechanisms leave stranded. This is where Reinhart is teaching other pop-up constructors is a good place to put words.

I love Reinhart admitting that as a child he didn't particularly care to read.

For boys, reading is decoding.

And adults made this decoding more difficult than necessary by importing from other languages and by phonemes not matching and by sounds disappearing to silent letters and weird letter combinations too many to enumerate. It takes a lifetime to learn and it's never quite fully mastered.

A teacher told Reinhart some boys don't like to read but the pop-up books draw them in.

This is why I relate to Reinhart so strongly. He's actually helping children connect to reading. I think that is wonderful. When he said that gets him, it gets me too.

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Blogger allows only one additional page, so this is my own third click page. 

Care to hear something weird?

I don't even know if this is true. I'm explaining what it feels like.

The last blood transfusion wrecked my pop-up construction impulse.

It was an intense transfusion. 

And having said that I must now psychically pray to all those people still living. Here goes:

"Thank you for donating blood. All of you saved my life. The difference you made I felt immediately."

I felt them immediately.

I also felt immediately that none of them had any interest in pop-up books. Their life filled me. My life is filled with them. And there is nothing in it about pop-up books. 

There just isn't. 

My impulse was gone the day I stepped foot back in my apartment. I could actually feel the absence of the pop-up impulse. 

Because I was still thinking of dozens of pop-up ideas for various cards. The thoughts still keep pouring in. But the impulse to make them is just flat not there.

Thinking them finishes them. 

I don't have to prove it by making them physical. 

They arrive already done.

It's the weirdest damn thing.

And when I force myself to produce them then they're not made with any intensity of focus and they don't come out good at all. They're just shit. But I went through all the trouble so I mailed them anyway. With a note. Sorry it's shit. 

And I can pinpoint the moment to those three days of hospitalization.  It ruined me. And saved me at the same time.

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Still with me?

This is my second imaginary supplemental page. The third add-on page. The fourth page.

Here's another thing about blood transfusions.

No more blood transfusions from dudes with penises smaller than my own.

But how can I possibly control that? 

My penis is supposed to get larger as I age. I read that somewhere. It's like your ears get bigger as you get older. And other physical changes as well. Something about soft tissue. Whatever. 

"Thank you. Bless you, for donating blood and saving my life. But fuck you for your little dick." 

That line shouldn't be in my prayer but there it is. 

Now I have to age even more to regain what was forfeited and I'm not sure I can live that long. 

GAWL!