As a teacher, ends of term are a plague of marking, and that tends to make me crabby:
My procrastination engine keeps kicking. I found a photo sequence on an Origami Discord, designed by Daniel Brown, and knew I needed to try it.
Lovely challenging sequence, figurative representation of a crab, love this little model, must fold it again.
Whilst being eliminated from the Origami Tournament, I am still interested in the models being folded by surviving contestants. This week’s challenge was Jang Yong Ik’s :Smilodon” – a “sabre tooth tiger” like critter from time gone past:
The fold sequence is intense – this model ate up a 70cm square of black/natural duo Kraft paper like few other models. The body is thick and heavy, some sections had dozens of layers.
I took my time, considered as I went, determined to succeed on my first fold. In retrospect, using thinner paper would have an advantage in that the layer management would be easier, but the legs would be flimsy and require wire supports – tough for a designer to distribute paper structurally.
In the end, we have a crouching toothy fossil, it was an interesting exercise and entrants did some good shaping to personalise their folds. I enjoyed exploring the sequence.
Francesco Massimo shared his design for a cutie little “Eastern Dragon” on social media, and I knew I had to try it:
Folded from a 35cm square of Daiso green Washi, this little critter comes in at about 17cm nose to tail tip – a very efficient design.
Fairly simple folding, lots of half fish bases and some accordion sinks to hide away most off the paper while still leaving flaps for legs, horns and head – clever designing.
This was a welcome distraction from marking and I will probably re-fold him using duo paper as there are clever colour changes exposing the belly and other details.
Madly, I agreed to participate in an international tournament, at the Intermediate level:
Intermediate meant you got a diagram and 72 hours to fold a rendition of it. I decided the “advanced” category was beyond my available time as you only got a CP and presumably relied on the power of prayer.
I gave it a whirl, went for crisp and accurate, but played a little with the flowing style of mane. It was loved by nearly noone who voted – fair enough. Other, less well folded versions (in my opinion) got more “likes” – social media is like that. Useful punch in the face, thanks.
Round 1 of the tournament done … and I am eliminated. Time to focus on more important things.
Continue readingEach year, as an ice-breaker/getting to know you activity with my pastoral care group at the beginning of a school year I try to involve them in a collaborative origami megastructure:
Many hands made light work of the 90 sonobe modules, folded from Terracey colours (red, black, white). From little things, big things grow, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts (roll out the well trodden metaphors).
The construction has taken an age – 5 false starts until I discovered the module grouping – in the end it turned out to be alternating 5s and 6s on each vertex of each 6. Each sonobe module contributes 1/3 of a pair of adjacent points – and with careful colour planning no 2 colours are beside each other (well, that is nearly the case – in 2 places I was forced to break this rule, but you really have to look to find them).
90 modules take time, and most of the kids in the pastoral care group folded at least one – a true collaboration that results in a lovely spikey ball that will join the other treasures from previous years.
It is the days you do not look in your mailbox that mail arrives – I arrived home from work to find an astonishing collection of paper from Pham Hoang Tuan’s origami shop, and a couple of his diagrams, all screaming “fold me!”, so I started that journey:
I had only ever seen this model complete and in CP form, failed at solving that CP 2 times and had given up folding it for now, then it arrived in diagram form to my delight.
Continue readingA few months back, in the relative calm of my summer holidays, I began to re-fold “Harlequin” designed by Eric Joisel, after failing to successfully fold it during the “Tribute of Eric Joisel” competition I was part of late last year:
I took my time, learned lots from initially failing, made sectional maquettes to check techniques and really enjoyed the process of folding.
This model is such a synergy of techniques – I can see influences from so many of Joisel’s other creations (many of which I have folded before). The initial collapse is vaguely humanoid, but the shaping is the making of model. So many details to control. The face and hat are tricksy but I an really happy with the level of detail I managed here – he has a playful but chilled character, smug smile and refined face – the mask is jauntily sitting on his nose also.
The fabric effects to the sleeved and pantaloons are a nightmare – to make them seem to “drape” is really hard I found, but eventually it came together. I pre-creased some quilted effect on the bodice and skirt which I am really happy with, and the collar took me ages to nut out. He is in full stockings (diamond pattern), has goofy shoes, a fly-away in-action wavey cape and open hands – so many bits were there waiting to be shaped. One can only marvel at the genius of the design.
Continue readingDucks and Drakes usually are different – apart from gender, the drake is usually the pretty one, a quite common convention in the bird world:
Each model is folded from a sheet of the same paper, one the reverse of the other to create the different plumage patterns.
A lovely fold sequence is really efficient, so entirely achievable using 15cm origami paper (I have so much of this, and rarely use it). I decided on some teal-ish Yuzen, and the results are lovely.
Continue readingFriends are precious, real friendship takes work. The loss of a friend hurts and leaves a yawning void.
Rest now, my dear friend Michael Brent (Dr Winston O’Boogie) O’Donnell 05/01/1954 – 25/01/2021.
Cruising Fakebook, as one does, I came across a fascinating origami geometric mindf*ck:
Edu Solano Lumbreras kindly shared instructions for his design, having adapted the techniques used in Thoki Yenn’s “Umulus Rectangulum” corners, to make this tesseract like cubic möbius strip.
Comprised of 6 modules, with some exacting pre-creasing that lends itself to template work, you fold bent square tubes with 3 corners – the shortest corner makes the “tab”, the opposite end becomes the “pocket”.
Folding in a4, the geometry is just as elegant, if exacting.
Continue readingLooking through my Origami Library, I realised I had bought “Origami Tessellations for Everyone” by Ilan Garibi back as the pandemic hit early last year, and realised I had yet to fold anything from it at all:
Early last year was crazy times – bushfires, floods and then lockdown from Covid-19, this book got buried in my reading pile so it is time to begin the journey of exploring tessellations more formally.
Starting at the beginning, with the “Cubes Family”, this is “Cubes”, a deceptively simple tessellation of twisted cubes. I present the “molecule” – that is the tileable unit:
Further exploring all things equinine, I realised I had never folded Satoshi Kamiya’s horse:
Central to this horse design is a lovely mane, but the volume and proportions of this model are amazing, the base it originates from is immediately “horsey”.
Shaping matters, and I think I have been a little clumsy, but I suspect some of the fat is the paper – crisp 70cm kraft – I think if I had used a thinner/more textured paper the result would look less like a plastic horse.
There are lots of really challenging moves in this sequence – gathering the pleats to allow you to fan out the mane while not distorting the outside layers in mindboggling – there is LOTS of paper hidden, and I think my accuracy for this, the first fold, was pretty good.
I must chase up a copy of Issei Yoshino’s book – that horse has a mane that apparently inspired Satoshi to design this one.
Always on the look out for an elegant depiction of a horse, a contact on Insta posted his fold of this model (a model I had not seen before), and I knew I had to try it:
There are many stunning origami horses – my favourite 2 of note are David Brill’s (folded from a triangle) and Satoshi Kamiya’s (which I have yet to fold).
This model has the proportions and majesty of a fine racing horse and the fold sequence is a lot of fun – you have to be accurate and exercise restraint throughout to get an elegant form.
Folded from a 40cm square of Tant (a little heavy for this design, but I liked the colour and texture so persisted), I think I have a new favourite – such a beautiful horse, and lovely internal structure also.
Continue readingFlipping through “Bugs and Birds in Origami” by John Montroll one gains an appreciation for the clear design skills on show:
This is Montroll’s “Butterfly” – published in 2001, representing ‘old school’ design, the resultant model is lovely, efficiently uses paper and is morphologically pretty accurate – all this without the hundreds of instructions typical of more modern designs.
Folded from a 30cm square of Daiso unryu (do they still make this? i have not been able to buy it for years), the work to isolate legs and antennae is delicious (if requiring precision) folding, and overall is a fun sequence minimally diagrammed.
Continue readingI was scheduled to go on a weekend away with the missus, then the State Government called a 3-day lockdown because of a small outbreak of a new strain of Covid-19, so found myself home with some time on my hands:
After 2 glasses of wine, I decided to see what Kraft paper could do, and decided to throw a 70cm square of white/natural at Stephen O’Hanlon super complex wasp photodiagram design.
I fully intended to stop when it failed – Experience has taught me that insects like this require really thin paper, but I just kept folding and the model worked out pretty well. There is a lovely proportion to this model and the sequence is intense (I must have some skills because the wine seemed no impediment) and fun, borrowing from many designers – namely Shuki Kato, Robert Lang and Anibal Voyer – having folded from all these designers I can certainly feel the influences.
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