Reviews Archieven - Best Pop-up Books

Zahhak: The Legend Of The Serpent King

BestPopupBooks — Tue, 21 May 2019 21:13:19 +0000

Zahhak: The Legend of the Serpent King, created by Iranian award-winning artist and filmmaker Hamid Rahmanian and Meggendorfer Prize-winning Paper Engineer Simon Arizpe, is an impressive pop-up book like you’ve never seen before. It retells the Persian tale of Prince Zahhak who was easily convinced by the devil (Angra Mainyu) to murder his father King Merdas and take over the throne. Zahhak, meaning ‘he who has 10000 horses’, would rule the kingdom with his army for a violent and bloodthirsty 1000 years.

The Emergence of Snakes

The evil spirit, disguised as a cook, fed Zahhak with blood and the flesh of animals and one day Ahriman merely asked to kiss Zahhak on his two shoulders, which he agreed. Then Ahriman touched Zahhak’s shoulders with his lips and vanished. At once, two black snakes grew out of Zahhak’s shoulders. They could not be removed, for as soon as one snake-head had been cut off another took its place.

Source: welcometoiran.com

Zahhak: The Legend of the Serpent King is Hamid Rahmanian’s illustrated adaptation and one of the many tellings from Hamid’s masterpiece Shahnameh: The Epic of the Persian Kings, a book that counts an impressive 592 illustrated pages of digitally composed artwork collages. Shahnameh, also known as “The Book of Kings”, is a 1000 years old epic poem written by Abolqasem Ferdowsi, one of Persia’s greatest poets. Shahnameh, part historical and part mythical, is the world’s longest epic poem written by a single poet. Hamid Rahmanian took the effort to create an illustrated version of Shahnameh, which took him 10.000 hours of research to collect over 8000 pieces from miniatures of Persian manuscripts and lithographs from different eras. He and his team digitally cut-out all the pieces to combine spectacular collages that are composed into impressive scenes that tell the stories of Shahnameh. Some of the collages contain artwork combined from 33 manuscripts and Hamid managed to preserve the authentic look and feel by carefully selecting art that suits the stories very well.

“For the first time ever, a tale from the Persian Book of Kings springs to life in this stunningly produced and ingeniously crafted pop-up book.”

One day, Hamid Rahmanian visited a conference about Shahnameh in Toronto. To his disappointment, it was long and mostly boring. So he got inspired to create his own telling, using the rich culture of Persian art. He wanted to create something interesting for a more broader and younger audience. Something that would connect with an audience that already loves stories like Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings. Hamid saw that potential in Shahnameh and started collecting over a hundred books with historical Persian artwork. Hamid decided to not create his own artwork and took the effort to assemble collages of cut-outs, only using original Persian school artwork from the books he gathered.

Artwork

The collages, that are digitally created by stacking cut-out elements as layers, formed a perfect base to create a pop-up book. By using pop-ups with multiple layers, the collages aren’t flat anymore and reveal what’s hidden behind the overlapping elements. This makes it even more interesting to see how the scenes are built and what elements are used to tell the story. It’s the perfect medium for this kind of artwork that has many secrets hidden behind each layer.

Paper Engineering

The paper engineering by Simon Arizpe is really impressive and full of surprises. It’s amazing to see how everything fits inside this packed book. Some of the giant pop-up scenes also reveal mini booklets with the most beautiful details. There’s also a lot of animation and rotation going on. One of our favorites is Feraydun on his horse in Zahhak’s dream. It stands up and rotates with a two-way mechanism that also points towards Zahhak who peeks back with an eye that opens right on time. The engineering of Zahhak is subtle and impressive. It respects the artwork and adds extra depth and animation to the endless layers and pieces.

We had the opportunity to ask Simon Arizpe some questions about Zahhak and his work as a Paper Engineer. Click here to read the interview!

Order at Amazon: Zahhak: The Legend Of The Serpent King

Concept, art & design by Hamid Rahmanian
Paper engineering by Simon Arizpe
Text by Ahmad Sadri & Melissa Hibbard
Published by Fantagraphics Books

Useful links and resources:

fictionvillestudio.com
simonarizpe.com
kingorama.com

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Horrorgami DIY Horror Kirigami

BestPopupBooks — Mon, 24 Oct 2016 20:08:22 +0000

Horrorgami, created by Paper Dandy, is a DIY book that features 20 cut-and-fold kirigami designs based around scenes from horror films. Paper Dandy is a kirigami genius who makes the most beautiful and impressive scene’s out of a single piece of paper. Horrorgami gives you the opportunity to create and experience Dandy’s designs yourself.

We already knew of the amazing art of kirigami but the work of Paper Dandy is something else and a great discovery. His work is a unique combination of kirigami technique, stage design and use of light. That’s right! Light is a very important element in Dandy’s designs. His exhibitions contain light boxes that display his art on a black mirrored plate, giving the silhouetted paper sculptures a magic and mysterious appearance. His Horrorgami exhibition was a great success and this DIY book followed up. Lucky for us, we now can make these pieces of art ourselves! We gave it a try and ordered Horrorgami to review.

About Horrorgami

Each project features step-by-step instructions and a template that you remove from the book. You then follow the lines on the template, cutting and folding to make your own kirigami model. All you need is a scalpel, a cutting mat and a ruler.

Horrorgami first impressions

Horrorgami is a great book! A steal at Amazon and fun for many hours. All 20 designs look great and the pictures of the examples look breathtaking. Just like the Horrorgami exhibition. This feels like something special because now you can create some of those creepy horror scene’s yourself. All you need are some tools, patience and a nice place to display the result. Sounds easy but it’s not that simple. If you screw up, you’ll need to start over again. The more complicated a template, the more time it takes to cut it out and the more risk you’ll take to screw up.

Getting started

So before we get started, we first arrange the right tools like a sharp precision knife (x-acto), a self healing cutting mat, a ruler and something to bend the corners like a toothpick. Each project contains a template page, a picture of the result and some instructions to help you on your way. Because you can mess things up, it’s wise to make a photo copy of the template page on heavy paper. We first tried the Werewolf pop-up and that came out great using the precision knife. It took about an hour to cut everything and fold it into a working pop-up. This may seem easy but it’s pretty hard to carefully bend and push all elements into place without damaging the paper. Looking at the result, you’ll agree it’s all worth it. The effect of light going trough the layers of the pop-up is amazing. We also tried a set-up with colored lights like the examples in the book. We’ve made and posted a test video of the result on our FaceBook page.

Going trough the book, we realized that some smaller details would be very hard to cut-out. Especially the last pages and in specific the Godzilla pop-up that contains tons of tiny windows. After the Werewolf pop-up as an appetizer, we decided to give the Godzilla pop-up a try. To see if we can make something this complicated. But cutting it all out at 100% may be a problem. So we decided for this project, to make a 200% photocopy of the template.

Cutting all the windows and details wasn’t a headache but very relaxing. It helps to have some relaxing music in the background so we turned on Groove Salad, a non-commercial online radio station that plays nonstop ambient/downtempo beats and grooves. Once you get a feel for the cutting, thing smoothen up and go faster. You’ll learn quickly how to hold your knife, where to hold the paper and how far you need to cut to get all peaces out of the paper without tearing. The folding of this pup-up is a bit of a puzzle. It’s clear where you have to fold the pop-up but it’s more complicated to push it out from a flat position into a working and folding pop-up. Folding it all the way is the final check to see if you’ve done it all right. If everything is done correctly, the pop-up should completely fold in. In this position you can flatten some folds and carefully adjust mistakes. Now the pop-up folds in-and-out nice and smooth!

For the copy of the template page we have used heavy 240 gsm paper. Folding lines need to be half-cut so the paper needs to be of a certain thickness. Also, when you blow-up a kirigami design, the paper needs more strength to keep up the structure. As you can see from the results of our Godzilla project, the paper could have been a bit stiffer and heavier but that would make it harder to cut trough all the windows.

Horrorgami is unique and surprising. It’s fun to make something great out of a flat piece of paper. It’s even more fun to create beautiful scene’s designed by a talented kirigami artist like Paper Dandy! If you do have the patience, like the horror genre and you would like to give kirigami a try, then Horrorgami is absolutely a must have! The perfect DIY project for after midnight or Halloween.

Order Horrorgami at Amazon.

Paper engineer: Paper Dandy
Publisher: Laurence King Publishing
Author: Marc Hagan-Guirey

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That’s my Hat Department Store tour

BestPopupBooks — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 17:57:43 +0000

We’re sorry, should we say exclusive department store? They sell almost everything accept for that annoying monkey. So why would you look for a monkey in an exclusive department store? What they do have, are all kinds of exclusive fashion items. If you’re lucky you can even find some stylish blue hats…

If you already own this wonderful pop-up book, you’ll know what this is about. We’ve just discovered the pop-up adventure That’s My Hat! created by Anouck Boisrobert and Louis Rigaud. It’s a refreshing illustrated pop-up book that tells the story of a brave and bright character that goes on an adventure after the wind takes his new blue hat. The story takes off when a cab is drawn and drives the character to the next page to go after the hat.

That’s My Hat Department Store close-up gallery

In an enchanting setting of spacious white backgrounds, decorated with thin lined drawings and flat basic colors, you will be immediately captivated by the beauty of the artwork. It shows how basic paper engineering combined with art, is a very strong combination to tell a story. At this point you would almost forget we’re reviewing a book for children. Those are the best to collect. Therefor, this pop-up title will be on our collections “Art book shelf”.

The most cutest bakery ever illustrated

There’s a lot going on in this book with a total of ten pop-ups. The same artistic style is applied to several locations such as a library, the zoo, the most cutest bakery ever illustrated and a department store. To give you a detailed impression about That’s My Hat, we’ve made a gallery with close ups taken from the Department Store spread. In case you’re wondering, yes, we will make a video review about this title. First things first but it’s very high on our list to review later this year. We’re so exited about how beautiful it is, we couldn’t wait to show you some first images.

Order at Amazon: That’s my Hat

Did you already see our review about Popville? Another great pop-up art book created by Anouck Boisrobert and Louis Rigaud.

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