How to Make a Giant Papercraft Head

Rollin Bishop
May 28, 2014

Will Smith and Norman Chan of Tested made giant papercraft heads for the recent Maker Faire Bay Area with the help of photogrammetry expert Brandon Blizard. The process involved using PhotoScan, Maya, and Pepakura to obtain the final outcome. Instructions on how to make a giant papercraft head are available on Tested’s website.

The heads took about about two weeks to build from start to finish, including several long nights of paper cutting and gluing, right up until the morning of Maker Faire. They were laborious to make, but it’s technically a project that anyone can do without previous papercrafting experience. Of course, knowing what I know now about the process, I would’ve done several things differently to streamline the build. Having just a few more days of time for putting the heads together would’ve gone a long way to making them look so much better, but I think they still turned out great for the first attempt.