For over 20 years, Yamaha has featured a dedicated paper crafts section on its website. If one wishes to spend their time, energy and above all their skills creating paper models of Yamaha motorcycles, the company was willing.
Best of all for the aspiring paper motorcycle artist, Yamaha didn't even charge users for these designs. Instead, the Japanese company provided the templates for free, so anyone could download them, print them, and create Yamaha paper sculptures to their heart's content. Additionally, the company has also started offering paper models of rare animals, for a little more variety.
However, Yamaha decided that its papercraft project had reached its conclusion. The project was closed in 2018, although at least one fan tried to archive all the designs online for a little longer. This archive site has since disappeared… But not completely! The unique designer behind all these beautiful Yamaha designs, Nobutaka Mukouyama, recently spoke with the Japanese magazine Mosai to talk about his work in a long interview.
As Nobutaka Mukouyama tells it, in 1997 he was working in a design company under contract with Yamaha and was preparing for the next edition of the Tokyo Motor Show. Someone else at the design company suggested featuring a paper motorcycle, but the design seemed too simple to Nobutaka Mukouyama. He was intentional about this project and began the incredibly detailed path that Yamaha's paper works eventually took. Having just one person working on the project kept costs down.
Nobutaka Mukouyama became interested in both model making and product design from a young age. Combining these two interests with paper, the end result produced both relatively simple Yamaha models, as well as the incredibly detailed Ultra Precision series that appeared later. Some important models in Yamaha's history have been brought to life in these incredibly detailed forms, like this YA-1 kit.
Nobutaka Mukouyama relied on several tools to design, prototype and refine each motorcycle before releasing the final design to the general public. Adobe Illustrator helped him sketch out the ideas, then came prototyping with various hand tools and paper. First, he used cheap drawing paper, then later he would move on to fancier paper, particularly if he was building a model intended for display. Some prototypes, like the Ultra Precision MT-10 series, required approximately 2 hours of development from start to finish.
Although Yamaha's Documentary Projects website is no longer active, Nobutaka Mukouyama says the most rewarding part of this work is the enthusiasm some people had for it. Even now, he said he still has enthusiasts contact him about their own models that they have built using his designs.
Although the plans are currently not available on Yamaha's website, Nobutaka Mukouyama is active on both Instagram et Twitter. He occasionally posts links to purchase some of his paper model kits on Mercari Japan.
In 2021, his projects also continue involving Yamahas currently focusing on amigurumi and needle felting projects such as the front of the R1M
