Castleforte
Self Portrait PaperGodz Toy
The original Paper God. Ha! Ok well, not exactly. I promise you I do not have a God complex. But the first PaperGodz toy was this self portrait which I created as a mascot for the site. I liked it so much I decided to create the PaperGodz series.
I have been designing and sharing my paper toys since 2006 when I launched my very first NiceBunny paper toy. As far as I know I was the first person in the states to do this, and one of the first in the world. At the time I had only known of one other artist making toys like these, who inspired me to make mine, and he is based in the Netherlands. His name is Sjors Trimbach and you will find some of his wonderful work in the Papertoy Monsters book. Naturally, Sjors was the first artist invited to be in my book.
I have since learned there was one other paper toy artist doing this back in 2006, the talented Shin Tanaka from Japan. But I had not yet heard of him back then.
I have since created hundreds of paper toys, some for fun, some for clients, all for the love of making toys. I also launched the first and only paper toy social network, NicePaperToys.com. And of course the wildly successful Papertoy Monsters book, with Papertoy Glowbots to follow. Does any of this make me a Paper God? I don’t think so. But it does seem appropriate that there would at least be a paper toy version of me. And now there is.
Not sure anyone would want a paper toy of me in their collection, but if enough people ask for it perhaps it will be made available some day. Until then, I think I look pretty good on my shelf amongst all of my other paper toy creations. Most importantly though, it worked out nicely for the site, which was why I created it in the first place. I hope you like my mini paper me.