Having successfully passed their initial practical test with my "Skeleton in the Closet" concept, Santoro Graphics Ltd employed me as their in house paper engineer. I worked with Lyn Hourahine the inventor of the Swing Card™ for the first year. During the following three years I helped expand their award winning Swing Card™ range creating a wide selection of themed cards for them, including a 'Panting Dog', 'The Frog Prince', 'Punch & Judy', a 'Rocking Chair', 'Alice in Wonderland', the 'Log Flume', 'Cat's Fishing', the 'Teddy Bears Picnic', a 'Farm Tractor', 'Roller Coaster', a group of 'Ballerina's' and a 'Row Boat,' complete with rowing action, pictured below.
In addition to my finalized cards listed above there were numerous swing card prototypes I had developed which never quite made it to the market place including; a large articulated Tyrannosaurus Rex, a Helicopter, Pig, Cat, Tiger, and my personal favorate, a working levitating magic trick.
My role as creative paper engineer was to develop each swing card from my initial idea & sketch to a fully working blank prototype. Santoro Graphics commisioned illustrators to add the artwork to my prototypes but I still had to work with the illustrators to ensure that vital contours were adhered to in order not to foul the working mechanisms as well as to guarantee all 2 dimensional artwork aligned properly when assembled into the final 3D structure.
In addition, and for each card I created, I had to set out Die Cutter Guides, Nesting Plans and finally of course the Assembly Guides, produced in both written and illustrated form detailing the order in which each component had to be put together to form the final Swing Card structure.
On top of the above duties, I managed to create several innovations and developed some new greetings card designs which Santoro promptly took on as their own. Including 'Rockers', a natural progression from my 'Punch and Judy' mechanism.
I left Santoro early 2004 to seek out greater paper engineering challenges and a wider variety of projects...
In addition to my finalized cards listed above there were numerous swing card prototypes I had developed which never quite made it to the market place including; a large articulated Tyrannosaurus Rex, a Helicopter, Pig, Cat, Tiger, and my personal favorate, a working levitating magic trick.
My role as creative paper engineer was to develop each swing card from my initial idea & sketch to a fully working blank prototype. Santoro Graphics commisioned illustrators to add the artwork to my prototypes but I still had to work with the illustrators to ensure that vital contours were adhered to in order not to foul the working mechanisms as well as to guarantee all 2 dimensional artwork aligned properly when assembled into the final 3D structure.
In addition, and for each card I created, I had to set out Die Cutter Guides, Nesting Plans and finally of course the Assembly Guides, produced in both written and illustrated form detailing the order in which each component had to be put together to form the final Swing Card structure.On top of the above duties, I managed to create several innovations and developed some new greetings card designs which Santoro promptly took on as their own. Including 'Rockers', a natural progression from my 'Punch and Judy' mechanism.
I left Santoro early 2004 to seek out greater paper engineering challenges and a wider variety of projects...
