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Its no secret I'm a huge flower fan, and making paper flowers is a passion. The last 2 years, I've done paper flowers for February Flowers on my IG, but last year I focused my paper talents towards video game flowers. While it seems that the narrow niche may be small, I was actually pleased to find an over abundance of flowers to make from all sorts of genres (its easy to find examples in games like Animal Crossing and Harvest Moon).
Today I'm gonna focus on ones I've made from horror games, and though you won't find tutorials here (yet), I can assure you that they're not so hard as they may look.
I lied. The RE herbs nearly broke me. 8D;;;
Purple Clematis (Spirit Camera)
Starting with my favorite series, here's a vine of purple clematis from one of my favorite installments of the series (or rather spin-off). The clematis and its vines close off the mansion where Maya used to live, and are an important color motif throughout the game.
These flowers have a large
center, made with yellow crepe paper streamers, and then double layered purple tissue paper petals. The long stem also includes crepe paper leaves. The color seems to have faded slightly into a hot purplish pink, but the original paper i chose was a deep purple color.
Given the nature of the game, its hard to find in-game images but the clematis is an easy flower to find reference to, with fluffy centers, and pretty deep colors like blue and purple, though it can also come in very beautiful white, or even cream.
Above is a scan of the purple diary, with the clematis motif on a paper screen (a page that leads to a rather tense scene in the game).
This fanart also shows great details of Maya's accessories as well as a clematis flower.
Blue Roses (Ib and House of the Dead Scarlet Dawn)
Blue roses aren't just in horror games. In fact, the blue rose is a symbol of a secret, unattainable beauty (as they do not exist naturally in real life--yet), or unattainable love. White roses dyed blue are usually how some blue roses are made; scientists have been genetically modifying and selectively breeding them for years and have only attained lilac or mauve colored roses, but perhaps one day, they will exist to buy.
In the meantime, we can form them from the delicious and varied colors of blue. This one is made of crepe paper, but I've made them with coffee filters, tissue paper, and even wired ribbon.
Blue roses appear in many games, but for horror games, Ib is one of the games I point to as inspiration, given that roses actually are a game mechanic, as they represent the characters' health. Ib, the title character, has a red rose, while the blue rose represents Garry, a young man also trapped in a nightmarish art gallery with Ib and the mysterious Mary. I last made them in colored ribbons as they look the most vibrant and color fast.
Amusingly, they also appear near the end of HotD Scarlet Dawn where their deep blue color looks really striking in a long corridor of planters down an elegant hallway. According to Kate, they represent miracles, to which Ryan replies, droll, that they could use it. Really drives that whole GM point home, since those things look way more silk-flower vibrant than naturally grown flowers ever could. XD
Green, Blue, and Red Herbs (Resident Evil)
Ah yes, the holy trinity of dank herb: green, blue and red. Grind them up, combine them, hoard them, scarf them down. I could go on with my Californian weed jokes, but let's be real, I couldn't have chosen a more iconic, yet difficult set of flowers to do.
This bundle has 2 sets. The first was a "fully size" version of the green herb, and comes in 2 larger sprigs. The second set is a smaller sprig of green, 3 small blue herbs, and a single red herb sprig. I used the new models for the RE2 remake, as they made really distinctive leaves, as well as being much easier to find hi-res references. These puppies deceivingly look easy but actually are rather time-consuming.
The green herbs are fern-like, which while making, made me die a little inside with each fringe snipped leaf; each leaf was an individually cut leaf, and then fringed and then attached to many different smaller branches. I ended up stopping at 2 sprigs but could have easily done 3 of the larger size if I had the patience and mental fortitude.XD
The blue herbs are actually the easiest, since they look more like tall lavender sprigs, and easily is accomplished by using the same techniques I use for hyacinths and lavender. The blue I used was more true blue, while the ones in game look more lilac or lavender, but whatever floats your boat.
The red herbs are also a little more time consuming, as they also require individual leaves on a single sprig. They appear more like a vine, or hanging plant, like a pothos, only with reddish pink leaves. Like the green herb, each leaf has an inner wire for stability and form, with 2 sides of paper to make the leaves.
I wouldn't mind going more full sized, but little by little @_@. Green herbs alone are pretty time consuming.
White Claudia (Silent Hill)
This deceivingly simple flower and leaf stalk is a major component in the local drug PTV, which was distributed by the cult in the titular town.
This one was quite possibly the hardest one I had to do, as hi res pictures of the white claudia plant are hard to come by.
This image is a render from the game, where a book has a picture of a pressed version of the flower. Even here, its nearly impossible to see what the flowers look like, though the game files indicate that it does indeed have oblong leaves. They very vaguely resemble camassia cusickii, but its mostly due to the star shape, and even then, this isn't a perfect match.
This is about where I had to use my imagination, and do some deep searching. This fan art by Juuhanna was the best hope I could count on, so i ended up using coffee filters for that slightly translucent look with the added stiffness for stability. Coffee filters are great for curling and holding their shape without much effort, and all things considered, they turned out as close to that low-res image as anyone could have managed. I'm fairly happy with it, all things considered.
Midnight Pimpernel (Siren)
The midnight pimpernel is a blood red flower, symbolizing hidden religion, according to its game. Apparently the otherworld the villagers strive to attain with their garish rituals is littered with countless fields of them. The flower ends up being an archive item that needs to be collected to 100% the game (difficult as it is).
This one was made with red paper and even has a root system I added with brown florist tape. The leaves were also made of tissue paper, doubled up, though it doesn't have any stabilization wire inside the layers.
This was another tricky flower to make in
paper, due both to its form as well as its source material. The scans of the guidebook don't provide very large pictures of the flower and the in-game picture is also small. Luckily, it seems that the inspiration for the midnight pimpernel is actually the fabled Queen of the Night, or night blooming cereus, a gorgeous, night blooming flower that blooms usually once a year, and only at night, wilting after a few mere hours.
The midnight pimpernel appears to be the
same flower, only red, so a change in color was rather easy. What makes it different from its real world inspiration, however, is the fact the night blooming cereus is a cactus flower, while the midnight pimpernel looks more like a standalone flower on a thin but sturdy stalk. The stalk appears to grow straight up, then dip down, but still has the bloom face upwards, a u-shape to the top of its stem. I ended up just combining what I recalled from the Queen of the Night images I've seen, and using a stem with roots, as per the drawing from the in-game items. The hardest part of it was making the tissue paper cup appropriately, as well as have the spindly, thin lower petals, which was achieved by making a long strip of petals with each smaller petal rolled by hand. Time consuming, but effective.
Crimson Butterfly (Fatal Frame: Crimson Butterfly)
Though not a flower, this addition gives the rest of the bouquet that extra special touch. My first favorite horror game of all time (in fact may actually be one of my personal top 5 video games ever), this game still stands up to being one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had in all my years. The ingenious camera mechanic, the perfect pacing, and the best difficulty balance for me, Crimson Butterfly has made me really appreciate the attention to detail the game has.
The titular butterflies play a huge part int he story, and while I haven't quite made mine have the bioluminescent look to them, this
simple paper butterfly actually wouldn't have been possible for me if i hadn't seen dozens of them in a classroom I taught at once. While I wasn't able to ask the teacher how her students made them, I did manage to take a long look at them to get the general idea.
Cutting a double (your could even add more layers for extreme fluffiness) layer of tissue paper into a short strip, then rounding the edges like butterfly wings, the rest comes together by scrunching the middle down with a pipe cleaner, then forming antenna and a body with the rest of the pipe cleaner. Easily set onto flowers, or even attached to things like a safety pin for a quick brooch or hair pin for a hair accessory, this versatile paper craft can be adjusted for a myriad of projects and cosplays/outfits.
Arranged together in a wall mounted vase, or even a regular vase, these flowers have a great color variety that can pass for a normal arrangement that you can continue using until well past the halloween season. Toss in a couple black and orange flowers, pumpkins, or even a handful of fluffy marigolds for Dia de Los Muertos, and you have a stunning bouquet that has a little more meaning behind each bloom.
--Dio (10/23/19)
Fanart images from pixiv.com, by Juuhanna, respective series wikis, and FFTranslations.
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