Research: Greeting Cards

 I purchased a Wide variety of greeting cards to get a basic concept of paper engineering. There was a use variety of different method of making paper have different levels. I looked at different varieties of cards.

These cards are folded into three parts and open up to make a form of diorama. Their main technical achievement come from how they are built in the way that paper is clipped together to create a 3D form that dangles from the card. the suspended 3D form is really amazing to look at and is very complex to dissect and would be very difficult to alter. The card featuring the boats is the most impressive to me as they are so perfectly designed both in form and movement. Sadly though it translates well onto a card I cannot see this method being as effect within a book as there is nothing to 'hang' from. Unless it was attached to a pop-up mechanism within the book which could possibly over complicate the page. Overall I really enjoy the technical prowess of the construction of these cards but I feel they can be seen as too complex and messy if not displayed properly this is seen mostly in the monkey design, though some could argue it is in flavor of the theme.

These cards are very simple in the fact they are a single image broken apart and layer to create a more 3D effect. Again this works well as a card but does not translate too well into a Pop-up book as it requires you to manually pull it open for it to stand. It would work well as a removable insert within the book but other than that I do not see a potential use for this method.

These cards are very simple with pull out layers, they were sold as Pop-Out cards and require you to manually pull out the 3D elements, which are incredibly basic, good for a birthday card but could not be used in a book seriously. Though one used a concertina style which is something interesting to draw from that and could be implemented onto a page as a extension. But in terms of 3D aspects these are terrible and I have no interest in manually popped pop-up.

This card is typical good, solid paper-craft, it is a detail scene cut from a single piece of paper, this is definitely something I need to work from. it is very professionally presented and is minimalist focusing more on the cuts than any accompanying illustration meaning it can be assessed easily by myself. I really like this style though I feel it is more of an adult orientated style of paper-craft that you would see in gallery or exhibitions rather than a children's book. It is clean, simple and can easily be alter to my desires.