A penguin duo is appropriate with Mother's Day fresh in our minds. And a couple more families for good measure... Erwin and Annabell, cute aardvarks....
...a bear trio...
...and ever-popular flamingos.
Besides many small-scale kits available via his Etsy shop, Wolfram does commissioned work for big and small clients, carefully designing an animal to match a specific request. He explains, "This is something not everybody can do, especially if they just download free models from the internet."
"I design everything myself, place each polygon by hand, using as much detail as needed to either achieve a certain character or match a desired assembly time. The [kit] rabbit takes two hours, for example, while my unicorn takes twelve hours to put together."
Wolfram was commissioned to create a rabbit in three sizes for a Swiss hotel. Hotel employees assembled the models and sold them to their customers during the Easter season. "I prepared the sculptures in three sizes, from 35-150cm (14-60 inches) in height. For this project I didn't want to go with the frequently seen Disney or Dürer low poly rabbits, so I designed a standing pose."
As with most every creative who ships things long distance, Wolfram has a story to tell about the delivery of a recent design...
"One of the most exciting projects I've done this year was a life-sized jaguar who leaps out of the wall. It was quite an odyssey... a London-based company asked me to design this big cat for an awareness campaign/exhibition in London. I built a big wooden crate to make sure the courier wouldn't crush my work, which has happened a couple of times in the past when I used cardboard. The box was quite big - 110cm long, 90cm high and 60cm wide (43 x 35 x 24 inches), but despite its size, the crate was lost and a bed frame was delivered instead!"
"I had calculated one week safety and hoped the jaguar would reappear, but the weekend approached fast, followed by a national holiday. My client was worried it wouldn't be found in time, so I bought more material, including wood for a new box, and rushed to duplicate my work over the weekend."
"I then found an even more expensive courier who promised to deliver the new jaguar after 2-3 days. As luck would have it, both cats reached London on the same day. The original courier called to tell me the crate had been delivered to someone else. [Can you imagine receiving something so unexpected in the mail?!] Luckily my client loved the jaguar so much they agreed to buy the second one for their office. But I can tell you, this was a stressful week..."
In addition to designing personable animals and doing freelance computer animation - he splits his work time 50/50 - Wolfram enjoys spending time outside playing with his young children, puttering in the garden, and improving his old house. "We have two goats who are very friendly (and constantly hungry) and a little tortoise who might be my reference for a future paper animal, who knows?"
Paperwolf is on Instagram and Facebook.
