Oly and Ted Cubees!

I haven't posted any Cubees for a while, so a little background is in order: Cubees are paper toys that you print and assemble yourself, and unlike most other papercraft models they require no glue or tape. They are the creation of Christopher Beaumont who runs Cubeecraft.com, where you can download hundreds of them for free. I've designed a number of these guys over the last few years and even had my Ernie Cubee featured in papercraft art books. You can find the ones I've designed in the Cubee section of my online portfolio.



Chris has a Cubeecraft show coming up this Friday at Brave New Worlds in Philly, and he had asked me a while ago if I'd like to contribute a new model. So today I'm very excited to reveal these Cubees of my characters Oly and Ted!



The Cubees Chris uses for exhibitions are larger than normal, so the Oly cubee is oversized while the Ted is standard Cubee size, making them proper scale with each other.

The central idea I had was to create a Cubee that was in a different pose than the normal standing position, but I found that was much easier said than done! I've had experience modifying the Cubee template in the past but this was definitely a challenge because of the large scale and inherent difficulty of making a person constructed out of cubes look "natural" in a lying down position. I put quite a bit of work into this seemingly simple design and I am extremely happy with the results.

Standard Cubees are free over on Cubeecraft.com so I will likely make Ted available on my site, but the larger models are more specialized and a bit harder to produce with a typical home printer setup, so kits to make Oly will be on sale at the show this Friday (Ted is included in the kit as well.) Of course there will be plenty more Cubees and kits at the show by Chris and the other contributing artists, so if you live in the Philadelphia area be sure to check it out! You can find more info here.