125009 LEGO 6009 Black Knight (August 26, 2012)
from: LEGO Castle theme / size: ± 35 cm
Download:
parts (6,14 MB PDF file)
instructions (3,26 MB PDF file)
Pictures:
Google Photos
125009 LEGO 6009 Black Knight (August 26, 2012)
from: LEGO Castle theme / size: ± 35 cm
Download:
parts (6,14 MB PDF file)
instructions (3,26 MB PDF file)
Pictures:
Google Photos
Ninjatoes' papercraft webpage 
Hi,
I just finished the helmet and am about to begin the dragon and plumes. It’s wonderful. Do you use a pen or something to mask the white edges on the paper?
Do you work from LDraw LEGO parts that you import in Pepakura Designer? I would like too to make a horse, but I suppose it’s rather dificult and time-consuming to create a model that fits perfectly like yours.
Keep going!
Hi there, I’m happy to hear you’re enjoying your build of the papercraft Black Knight!
Indeed I use markers or pencils to colour the white edges, it’s a simple but effective trick that makes a paper model look extra good, especially paper models with dark colours. If you use markers though, you have to take into account that the ink from the markers will soak into the paper a bit, so it often turns out darker than you thought: always try it out on a scrap piece of paper first!
I made the 3D models myself in a 3D program called Sketchup, you can see examples of it if you browse through the LEGO category on my weblog: http://ninjatoes.blogspot.com/search/label/LEGO
Most parts are the same everytime of course except for the colours, and for “new” parts I make scans of the actual minifigs and pictures from the internet. They’re really not 100% accurate sized up versions of the real minifigs, but I took a lot of time to make them the best I could, and I’m pretty happy with the way they came out. ;o)
The thing with existing 3D models (which I do often use for many of my papercraft video game models!) is that they aren’t created with papercraft in mind, and you need to do a lot of work anyway to make them into a paper model that’s fun to build… So I figured that in this case (because most of the shapes are pretty straight forward compared to other models… ;o) it was faster to make the 3D models myself, so I could make them exactly the way I needed to unfold to be able to assemble the paper model the way I thought would be best later on. ;o)
Making the parts fit “perfectly” is really just a matter of trial and error: I just kept adjusting the size of the connecting pieces until I was happy with the fit. ;o)
Have fun with the rest of the build, the plumes have some really thing and small pieces, so be sure to “pre-shape” (curve / fold them in the shape they need to be) them as well as you can to make it easier to glue them together.
Man, these models are amazing! Any chance you’ll make them for pepakura designer in the future? I’d really like to scale them up to make giant figure for my nephew!
I’m happy to hear you like my papercraft LEGO minifigs! I actually do use Pepakura Designer to make them, but because I always do the final fixing and editing of the parts in Photoshop, I can’t turn the final, corrected sheets back into PDO files of course…
I upload my papercraft models as PDF files for easy sharing, but you can easily scale them by opening them in an image editor like Photoshop or Gimp. Or, you can just have them printed on a large format printer/plotter to make the resulting paper model bigger of course! ;o)
(and because the textures in Photoshop can be much bigger than the ones I can use in Pepakura Designer, the “Photoshop templates” will actually look better when scaled up than the “Pepakura templates” would too! ;o)
I’m sorry I can’t give you any good, finished PDO files, but I hope with a little more work you can still scale the templates up to the size you want (scaling them *a lot* bigger will still cause noticeable “fuzziness” of course…!) and especially in the case of my papercraft LEGO minifigs, it will actually look better than when using the smaller Pepakura textures. ;o)
can you create a Lego Horse for the Knight?
There are many more papercraft LEGO minifigs I’d like to make in the future, including animals! ;o)
I’m afraid I can’t promise you when/if I’ll ever get around to making a papercraft version of the LEGO horse though (papercraft is only a hobby of mine, so I can’t work on it all the time of course…) but if I do, I’d definitely make it in the same scale as the minifigs so they can “ride” the horse (it would have to be very big…!)
is 160 gsm alright?
Basically, the thicker the paper you use, the stronger the final paper model will be. I always use 200 gsm paper, but it’s really your personal choice: if you like working with 160 gsm and the model is strong enough, you can use it of course!
For the paper LEGO minifigs, it’s important that they’re strong, because you have to push the arms, legs, and such into the holes on the body. It’s also a tight fit, because they shouldn’t fall off of course! ;o)
So when you’re building it, make sure everything fits together tightly, and the parts are strong enough, and then it will be okay. ;o)
Have fun building!
Wow… amazing detail on the helmet and dragon thingy! That looks a tad daunting. haha. But eventually I’ll make another Lego fig for Captain Redbeard. Want to make the Ghost costume for him, but haven’t had time yet.
The helmet with the dragon plumes is one of my favourite parts on this one too, they really turned out great! ;o) Papercraft is a very time consuming hobby, but you can download the parts and instructions of the ones you want to make, so you’ll always have them ready when you finally find the time to start it. ;o)
Have fun building!
Oh snap! You’ve done it again! Curse you and your wonderful Lego model! It’s too awesome to NOT make!
Haha thanks! I’m very happy with the results too! The grooves for the dragon plumes are a bit tricky, even more than on the other parts, it’s very important to score, fold and pre-shape them very thoroughly! ;o)