It has been a while since I posted anything about my modelling hobby other than occasional  hopefully relevant images in the Weekly Challenges…

Once upon a time, I used to be into gaming, either on the PC, Xbox (CLASSIC!!), or the Wii – we even have two Wii’s so that we can play NZ or US Wii games – but nowadays, I simply don’t have the time and when I’m sitting at the PC it is to work or, at the moment, look for work…so while I am aware of World of Tanks, mainly through its pop-up ads that permeate through the webosphere, I am not a player…World of Tanks, parent company, wargaming.net is also the major sponsor of David Cundall’s quest for Spitfires buried in Burma (perhaps) at the end of WW2. In mid-2012, WoT also began to post at Paper Modeling, a site I monitor pretty much daily piquing interest in the paper modelling community with promises of new paper models based on tanks in the game. Those promises are now being fulfilled at the rate of one a month.

Although the initial design work has been done to already incorporate these vehicles into WoT, the game, there is a little more to converting a gaming 3D model to a (buildable) paper model so this is more than just a cheap marketing ploy on WoT’s part, although that we should also recognise that paper modelling is far more popular and widespread in Eastern Europe and Asia than it has ever been in the West.

At the same time, using some of my few spare moments each day, generally while watching Coro, I am building a paper model as part of the UAMF Small Scale Armour Group Build and trust me, it’s not as easy as it looks and I probably would be finished now if I had opted for one of the more basic Airfix or Matchbox kits…but I have to be different and so have taken on a what is turning into a bit of a challenge. To a certain (possibly large!) extent this is self-inflicted as I am finding myself relearning a lot of previously learned lessons (pretty ironic for the lessons learned guru!!) as the time I have been able to devote to regular modelling.

Anyway, someone posted in my UAMF thread for this GB (I can post all these links but it doesn’t really matter ‘coz no one ever clicks them) last night that a. maybe it would be an idea to have a paper/card (one and the same thing, really) group build on UAMF sometime this year which lead to a. me posting this response, and b. thinking that it would be an idea perhaps to acknowledge within a wider audience the efforts of those designers that design and share their paper models as free downloads (and also to note the launch of the revamped Ecardmodels.com website)…

A paper/card model GB has been mooted before but I think that there is growing interest in the idea. As Ian says, there are a broad range available for download for free, of all degrees of complexity although I would recommend some relatively simple ones for starters so that builders can come to grips with the different techniques required, especially for folding and rolling – none of it rocket science, but none of it just quite that way we do it with other media…as a start point for anyone who might be interested, I would recommend that they check out the free model section at www.ecardmodels.com (select “free Models’ from the menu bar on the left of the home page) which has a range of mainly aircraft and vehicles with a few ships and buildings as well. There are also sites like the download section of www.papermodelers.com (must register and post in order to download), the models section of www.landships.info, the free section at www.currell.net, and, for those into World of Tanks, the model section on the Russian language (YOU MUST GO TO THE RUSSIAN VERSION AS THE MODELS ARE NOT LISTED ON ANY OF THE OTHER REGIONS FOR WoT) version of the site: http://worldoftanks.ru/media/?category=10 where they are releasing one 1/50 (of course, depending on your preference, printer and copier, the scale could be whatever suits…) tank model each month…

So that’s it really, just trying to spread the paper modelling love…in this days of financial crises and ongoing insecurity, it is nice to have a modelling-related hobby that doesn’t want an army and a leg just for the raw materials i.e. a traditional kitset, but which still provides for the satisfaction of seeing a  model take shape into a (hopefully) recognisable facsimile of the original…