Making an Army of Paper Robots

Given Mateo's interest in this Japanese cartoon about fighting robots, we decided to make some paper toys with 110 lb cardstock and the art supplies that we had on hand. The Cutter Bee Precision Scissors were particularly useful for making the standing cut outs and pop-up backgrounds.

Our standing cut out versions of the Tenkai Knights Titan mode. My nephew colored the base color with a yellow Crayola crayon, and I used some Caran D'Ache Neocolor II crayons to add some additional shades and brighter colors.

The good guys army was colored with markers and crayons. Notice the explosion cut outs and the red guy that can fly in his own Nakamura-lock paper airplane. Paper toys might be inexpensive to make, but they can still be plenty of fun.

The bad guys army was colored mainly with crayons. Our first batch below was particularly  monochromatic, but Mateo soon discovered how much better his creations looked once he took to coloring with multiple crayons.

Suggested reference materials for boys

Quick tip for my local readers and past students, I spotted a few copies of "Let's Draw Manga Transforming Robots by Yasuhiro Nitta - PLEX" marked down to $3.99 at the Borders on US 41 in North Naples. Not a bad deal for budding artists that could use a couple of pointers on sketching and building their own robots in the tradition of Gundam and Power Rangers Zords.
Shonen Jump magazine is also an inexpensive source of inspiration that showcases multiple manga story lines designed for boys by different artists. This anthology format is reminiscent of the common Japanese model of manga distribution and provides a good sampling of popular manga stories. This magazine's larger format allows an easier appreciation of the panel drawings that are typically shrunk in the manga collection digests.
Tip for Parents: Remember to check your local library video and manga collections for further free inspiration for your kids, but be careful in selecting appropriate titles for the different age groups. There is a lot of manga out there, and each title was created with a specific target demographic in mind. Thus it falls to you to choose suitable anime movies and manga series according to the maturity level and interests of your kids.

Robot coloring page

I was asked to draw a robot for a 6 year old, and this humanoid robot pencil sketch was the first to come up. Started drawing the head, torso and limbs, and then added the floor and surrounding cityscape. Then went back to the robot and thicken its outlines to make it pop up towards the viewer. Whole thing might have taken about 15 minutes and done freehand. Point of the exercise was to just loosen up and practice my pencil strokes with my Caran D'Ache Museum Fixpencil 4 mm leadholder loaded with 3B Technalo watersoluble graphite lead. The composition was kind of spontaneous, probably inspired by a Clone Wars Animated elevator sequence.