Alice in Wonderland pop-up card

This is a birthday card for a friend. The theme is based on the movie by Tim Burton.

The mechanism is based on the cardboard insert to cases of wine bottles. The idea that creates 12 spaces for the wine cases is extrapolated to produce a chessboard of 64 spaces.  The problem with such an idea is the arrangement folds into a very long and thick pile of slats and the dimensions must be very large. The arrangement opens as a Japanese paper fan hinged to the inside spreads completely open then plunks down on its prepared surface of alternating red and white squares. The floor and inside walls of each grid square match colors.

The character pieces are cards with slots that span at least two squares and can be placed anywhere.

It took a few tries to get an acceptable size. These characters shown here (and more) are the third time I drew them in working out the size that I wanted. 

The original versions were not a full grid. It turned out ridiculously large and I do not want that. I notice on YouTube people make giant pop-up cards as part of their art degree. They're always huge. Portfolio size. That will not work for a regular birthday card. I had four versions of partial grids before settling on this size in order to have the entire grid. By then I was tired of coloring in the figures and this last time left them blank.

Cop out. 

La la la, I don't care anymore. Color them yourself. That's my attitude.

I included coloring pens. 

Like I planned it.   

Characters wouldn't fit on the grid so a pocket is provided for extras. I made no attempt to provide a proper chess set with eight pawns each, two rooks, bishops, knights and the rest for each player. It's just the idea of their mad court, not a real chess set. 

This turned out one of the more popular cards. I haven't mentioned this to the person who has the card because the subject never came up but this card gets viewed pretty much every day and from all over the world. 

If you like, more words and more and larger photos here.

Joe's tree, pop-up card

This is one of the few cards that I wrote who and what the card is for directly on the card. Most of the others are not personalized. They can be recycled. 

That makes what happened to this card a bit odd. Joe is a business man some fifteen years beyond retirement age, the oldest person I know and I value his friendship, who for some reason keeps right on working anyway. He lives in Arizona and owns property even farther away. I overheard somebody else say he makes one call a day. Hardly worth the trouble of getting dressed up for, but that's what he does. A few years back he took in a younger man who was having a rough time. I overheard another conversation that referred to the habit as "broken bird syndrome" and I wish I hadn't overheard that. I thought in that moment, you always do have some cute way of summing up serious things, trivializing them. I'm sure the guy who accepted Joe's help wouldn't appreciate knowing that is how people viewed him and talk about him. The young man died. Joe said going through his things following his death this card along with a few others I sent Joe over years were among the young man's belongings. For some reason he took them without telling Joe. Such an odd way of getting them back. Such an odd story all around. 

 More photos here, larger, and more words. 

cupcake snake pop-up card

Larger photos, more explain-o here.

bear thank you pop-up card

The card is exceedingly simple. It is a bear offering a fish. You are expected to notice the bear took a bite out of the fish before offering it.

Both arms are placed on a single mechanism that flips up. The mechanism is like a short broad "V" shaped like a scoop. The fish is glued onto the paws at a slightly different angle than the arms of the bear so it bends the bear's paws outward.

O hai
Here have a fish.
Thanks for inviting me. Everyone was well-behaved and lovely.

It's just so deadpan and stupid. I'm imagining the recipient going, "wtf?" Eh, these things are never acknowledged.

butterflies pop-up card

This is a sympathy card for a friend whose mother died. Her name is Dorothy, we called her Dot.

If you cannot make it out, it is a double arc of scritchy-scratchy butterflies connected with horizontal braces in the shape of more butterflies. 

Butterfly, metamorphosis, standard condolence symbolism. Usually I do something along the lines of a caterpillar on one page, or the cover, with a butterfly on the next, or a butterfly on a lily pad or a butterfly that appears to fly off the page or some such, but this time I made a mess of butterflies. I could have drawn nice ones, I could have drawn them carefully and copied using a printer. I could  have found appropriate butterflies online and copied those, I could have used Hobby Lobby type butterflies made of feathers, but Instead I scratched them out rapidly.

I don't know what's wrong with me. I don't have patience anymore for careful drawing. Everything comes out scribbly and I send it off. 

The arc is based on Robert Sabuda's idea of Alice in Wonderland (video, skip to the end for Alice with cards) under a similar construction of deck of cards tossed into the air. It is marvelous because it really does look like they're carelessly tossed and seems to have no organization at all with cards flying all over the place, yet it all tucks in obediently. His version is fantastically imaginative. I like it a lot and so do other people too. Benjamin Lacombe copied Alice and the cards explicitly in his Il Était Une Fois [Once Upon a Time] (Video, Alice and cards at 0:54)

These two books together make an interesting contrast. I notice both authors struggle with themes. Sabuda relies heavily on familiar stories rather than making up his own. So does Lacombe rely on familiar fairy tales decidedly un French as if at a loss for material or unable to contrive something unique. Whereas Saubda is brilliant at devising pop-up mechanism, often times overly elaborate, so elaborate they need a bit of help closing shut because he relies on mechanism upon mechanism upon mechanism upon mechanism taking each to an extreme. But his art suffers. He is not that great of an artist. 

Lacome, on the other hand is a beautiful artist. I've shown his book to several women and they all fall in love with his art. They deeply appreciate his take on common themes and marvel at his interpretation through his careful painting. For example, his cards that are tossed in the air are all wonderfully imaginative and beautifully detailed. But his mechanism are terrible. Some hardly work. Most are exceedingly basic as if he has no training in pop-up mechanisms at all, and figured things out on his own just for this one book as I did for my first cards. His flower pedals are whole pages that shift on a tiny hinge. They almost don't work. There is no symmetry or balance, they do not actually pop up but rather fail to fall flat, and they barely shift and almost never stand upright so you worry your copy has something wrong. His strength is in his art.

And that tells me if I'd just take the time to make things beautiful then I don't have to concern myself with mechanisms, women will love them anyway. But it's not how I roll. I lost the patience I had at age twelve for tediously getting the drawings perfectly representative of my vision. Now I just scratch them out. I think hieroglyphics did that. Draw those things a couple thousand times and you're over it. 

Scritchy-scratchy will just have to do.

I have no idea how this card was received. The subject was never brought up.

More on this card if you care to, here.

Boy of Faiyum pop-up card

This card was prompted by the portrait I showed earlier. The portrait of the Roman boy living in Egypt at the artificial lake got me thinking, what would a Roman boy do for fun? The coffin portrait shows a gold laurel crown suggesting the boy was involved in sports. Beside that, what would a boy do who lived in a place like, say, Florida. A lot of things came to mind having to do with the delta and with water. This card is what arose from thinking about that. I have not spoken to the person since I mailed this card. I have no idea how the card was received.

A frog in the hand is worth two in the thicket.

Astromoths, pop-up card

The true story of NASA's first astronauts told over three pages in pop-up card form. It is a little known fact the first U.S. astronauts were moths. Their ill-fated mission did not go very far.

It's a joke.

A joke!

The dummkopf I gave this card to did not get the joke, and that flat pisses me off.

It had to be explained to him, and then of course, it isn't funny.

They're moths! They do what moths do. Go to the light. Never mind it means disaster, moths are not that smart. They cannot be trusted for anything so serious as a space exploration. They're too easily distracted by lights. That is the joke. Damnit, I hate having to explain simple things like this. Why else would I make them moths? Why else would I bother drawing a hundred tiny lightbulbs? Think, man, think!

It's enough to make you give up trying. That was a lot of work and the guy goes, "Duh."

See? Acme f'n light bulbs.

And the thing that just burns my hide is this guy is now flying around first class and taking cruises all over the place visiting foreign countries, seeing country after country after country, visiting building after building after building, park after park, walking street upon street, having drinks served to him, meals served to him week after week after week, month in and month out, and learns nothing at all worthwhile and cannot even see a joke that a child sees when it is spelled out to him. 

After telling me one of his tour guides extolled the virtues of socialism, and that the only people who vote against new socialist initiatives (new taxes) are the new immigrants, apparently too thick to understand how glorious socialism and high taxation is, who have so much of the advantages of the new programs, and then going on to describe a building  he visited in St. Petersburg, I asked him, "Did the guide explain they are discussing reverting back to the name Leningrad, and why?" 

"No."

Did your guide explain why the building you were touring is fitted with onion top roofs?

"No."

Do you know why they use onion top roofs? 

"No."

They all have fine properties here in the U.S. that can hold anyone's attention forever. They all live in states with outstanding outdoor sights, attractions, and activities to avail them, but instead spend fortunes, and I mean fortunes, on luxurious travel and take side tours besides while there, and manage to avoid learning anything at all worthwhile. Watch news and still do not know what goes on in the world, and why. And still cannot see a plain simple joke.

I give up.

Trannysaurus Rex

The most fiercely cretinous of the Late Cretaceous. More and bigger of this monster, here.

two dogs

This is a joke that nobody gets, and I mean nobody. I showed this card to some twenty people before mailing it and not a single person understood the gag. And jokes are simply not funny when they must be explained. Can you imagine how frustrating it is to go through such trouble as to construct a three-page pop-up card, to be so hilarious as this and have no one understand? Like I am the weird one?

Fail.

I almost ripped it up in disgust. The thing is, the viewer is expected to notice there are two breeds of dog. Two different types. Is that so hard to notice?  It is so obvious. This card convinced me it is an American thing that jokes need be glaringly obvious, overt, slapstick, cutting, hurtful to somebody, childish, and involve no thought at all, because I can draw the same joke in one picture, post it on a British satire site, and be congratulated for my impressive sense of humor. Make that humour.

The dog actually moves into the wall and the word "BLAM" flips out of the wall. That took some effort to get right.

"That answers your question." This one page is the whole joke. It should be a one page joke but I stretched it to three to make the joke easier to grasp. 

I get angry all over again just thinking about it. I hated having to explain it. It ruined the whole effort. Nearly put me off cards altogether. 

Look at that, there's a hole in the wall.

Bashed in nose, bits of brick laying around. Come on! That's funny! 

I give up. More of this disappointment here. 

anteater pop-up card

'Ere, have yourself an ant.

Sent to a friend for no reason at all. I thought it was funny. But now looking back I see how this can read as "thanks for nothing." 

The rest here.