Flatpack cardboard monsters

I was futzing about with the smallest householder using up cardboard that had come with furniture and stumbled upon correctly scaled dinosaurs standees. Needless to say, this is not the work of Michaelangelo but it shows the concept.

This was ten minutes work with a box cutter, a piece of toilet-roll and a chunk of packing cardboard so relatively little effort. The dinosaur was sketched on from a google-search image. Getting the scale right for 28mm minis was complete coincidence in this case but it then struck me once I saw it as a decent idea to do deliberately.

The toilet-roll to be its torso has serendipitously made it pretty robust. He was supposed to have a second set of 'feet' (another carboard cross) but he was grabbed off the desk and put into service before that bit got done and he stands up well enough with just one. In addition, it slots together and comes apart easily and repeatably so it could be a handy way to have big monsters available for use without hauling around back-breaking amounts of kit.

I started with standees long ago and there are many clever standee sets kicking about - Kala Mandala just made a nice set available - but I think there could be some mileage in some sort of print-and-stick sets which you could use to make big monsters like this that easily break down where necessary.

Order of the Stick had some cunning paper minis in their 'A Monster For Every Season' sets - where the mounts had flat bits you could put a rider on. There is probably a cunning angle here for making the 'support' bit a flat cross piece doubles up as the space for riders.

My primary paper-crafts client is going to be just looking for more dinosaurs, not more cunning designs so I may not get to try this out myself - would love to hear anyone elses versions of big card monster minis and how to do them.