The holidays are here and so I felt like making something appropriate. Considering that I spend a lot of this time of year hunting for the perfect gifts for my loved ones and that I have been looking into making models that move or have some sort of function, I felt that a Gift Box was a great idea for my next model. It both looks impressive and can be used to hold a present!
From the start, the main focus of the design was on the large bow on the top. I decided to use the faceted or low-poly style because I wanted it to contrast against the uniform appearance of the actual box part of the model. The ribbon on the box is faceted for the same reason, although at first it wasn’t raised up like in my final design. I felt that raising the ribbon made it “pop” that little bit more as well as give it a touch more realism.
The biggest issue I had with this model, believe it or not, was actually the name. You see, normally when I use this asymmetrical faceted look I use the term “Low-Poly” because, in my mind, low-poly describes any model where you can easily see the individual polygons. By that definition, just about every papercraft model could be described as low-poly but I tend to reserve it for this kind of asymmetric style that draws attention to and highlights the polygons.
On the technical side of things though, low-poly literally just means low polygon which is also kind of ambiguous. If you have two models of the same thing, one with 1,000 polygons and one with 5,000, even though 1,000 isn’t a “low” amount of polygons, it is in comparison to 5,000. Knowing that is why I had difficulty deciding how to name and describe my model; while it has the faceted look I usually associate with “low-poly” things, it also has some features that have more polygons than they technically need, mainly the ribbon, so it the term didn’t feel quite accurate.
It’s a small and rather silly problem I know but it’s what I found myself thinking about while designing and assembling the model. In that sense though, this is actually probably one of my favourite models because even though it’s a relatively simple and common object it still made me stop and think about something, and that’s kind of awesome.
As always, thanks for reading and happy crafting!
The Papercraftsman