I can’t tell if I would need to start by creating a physical paper cutout or if I could do it completely in Photoshop. I am not sure how to approach this, so any suggestions of tutorials or Youtube videos would be a great help.
Answer
I commented, but this actually is starting to look like an actual paper design ( see: http://smadani.com/ArcticPaper%20page.htm ) and that person’s portfolio includes a book “Paper Engineering; 3D Design Techniques for a 2D Material,” Rotovision, 2009.
The portfolio page linked above has other images which where the items look more like stacks of paper. Were I to do this in my garage, I might have a die made for 100$ and then use a press or even a car jack and some plywood sheets to punch out the letters from a ream or stack of paper. For thinner items, just an exacto knife.
As far as faking it:
Photoshop, some drop shadows, black stencils with color overlay, layer fill set to low, and a double layer of text with slightly different color overlays and shadow settings (one layer offset vertically a few pixels.) A 3D app is still the best option, since it will be way more realistic. The devil is in the details in a piece like this.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : flourishdesign , Answer Author : horatio