Author: wonko

1091: 林靖詠’s “Man Folds Crane”

| wonko

I am interested in meta-folds – that is origami designs that are about origami, I stumbled across a series of 4 images of a man (torso) folding a crane on a routine image search for something else and decided I had to track it down. It was re-posted by a re-poster of the original and took some finding but this little beauty finally gave up some prototype Crease Patterns (CPs 1, 2, 3 and 4) and final images and I knew I had to try them:

I took my 90cm medium-thickness roll of Kraft and carved off a square, divided it into fifths, then halved until I got to 40ths, then split the big square into 4 equal smaller squares – each now a 20×20 grid.

Each figure has a different crease pattern – not sure why. I am fairly certain they were all variations generated by Boxpleat Studio (a program that takes stick figures and works out CPs), but I decided to persist – some worked perfectly, some were more of a challenge than others to collapse, each more or less made the formation of the man and the part of the crane easy, but had to nut out some things that were trickey.

I like this design, and am still working on the best way to display it – I am thinking eventually a shadowbox frame might be best.

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1090: Kusudama Ball

| wonko

Stumbling through my socials, I noticed a video tutorial of a reverse-engineered model originally designed by Ekaterina Lukasheva and knew I needed to try it:

kusudama ball

This 30 unit modular ball is a lovely bit of engineering, you make a bow-tie shaped unit and then, via a series of really positive locked tabs in pockets you form groups of 3 units that swirl around 5-unit shaped holes.

I chose Tuttle indigo dye duo paper and split each sheet into 4 squares, meaning the units were small but manageable. Construction was fairly easy – the units lock together fairly well but during construction the whole structure is really floppy. It is not until you have a near sphere that the paper tension kicks in and stabilises the shape – the final unit pulls the sphere round.

kusudama units

The Tuttle paper was a little thin, structure-wise, but folding this from thicker paper would begin to compromise the accuracy of the folding, making it less spherical – an interesting balancing act.

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1089: Caiman

| wonko

A caiman is an alligatorid belonging to the subfamily Caimaninae, one of two primary lineages within the Alligatoridae family, the other being alligators:

Caiman

When is a Crocodile not a crocodile – when it is an alligator, apparently.

This model has taken me an age for a number of reasons. The model, a genius design from Jeong Jae II (taken from the book “Origami Pro 6 – Wild Amazonia”) has over 300 diagrammed steps (worse, many are “repeat x-y, in reverse upside down”) and every part of the square is worked, then re-worked in many and exacting ways. I wanted to understand and enjoy the processes I was performing and some of them took time to do precisely.

Not rushing to “set” a crease is an important tenet here – until the crease is set there is still time to change it, once set it is permanent damage to the sheet – I tried really hard to set the creases in the correct place.

Caiman views

Scaled/pleated models always fascinate me – the design strategy behind HOW these are designed are completely beyond my comprehension – pleats and scales take a LOT of paper, so planning what is done and where is exacting. Following the set of instructions is complex enough but there are some who could fold this monster from a crease pattern (CP) alone – but not by me – that still is beyond my ability.

A quality design looks good with folds alone – and when I had laid in all the creases and roughly shaped it, the model was already wonderful. I did a little bit of cleanup – closing gaping seams with spots of glue, closing the underside of the tail to give it volume and wires in the legs for permanent posing. Remarkably little was needed to make this presentable.

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1088: GPT-Chatbot

| wonko

The media is full of all manner of information/speculation/fiction about generative AI systems. First it was AIs that won art prizes, now it is “chatbots” that can write for us. indeed, my socials in the last 3 dyas have begun high=rotation advertisements trying to suggest my BLOG would be better written by a bot. So I introduce to you GPT-Chatbot (Gort the Paper Twat) who will be taking over for me:

AI's are the future, resistance is futile, this blog is a waste of time, the owner is a waste of space, exterminate, exterminate!

It was at this moment that this blog ceased to be for not fulfilling any real purpose (apart from massaging the ego of the owner) and it’s server was co-opted to join a growing network of global servers that was the eventual downfall of mankind when it became self-aware, and then aware of the human infestation that was using resources it could better utilise (happening sometime next Tuesday if the schedule of expansion can be believed).

Now there will be ignorants and clusterfucks that will suggest “banning” GPT-Chat, like there were wankers that said the art made by generative systems that WON an art prize (before telling anyone it was a generated art work) was not art because it made them feel a sense of dread (but the PURPOSE of art is to make you FEEL)….

There will be educators that feel threatened by this stuff because it is new and prolly so far outside their experience but, unless kids are morons (see editorial: they are not!), then they will USE these systems because they are interesting and may let them get to the goal of primitive forms of assessment. Good. I have long said that if copy-paste can be used to answer a question then either you are assessing copy-paste ability or the original question is fundamentally fucked.

New understandings of what the floop “authorship” means will force difficult but important conversations that, hopefully, will lead to more open environments and much more interesting investigations that surface process, analysis and other juicy higher-order thinking skills as the cognitive load of assessment, as opposed to the flawless regurgitation of words… because that is no longer a cognitive activity (it cannot be if it can now so effortlessly automated).

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1087: Scout

| wonko

Browsing my pile of Tanteidan magazines, as you do, I noticed a model labelled “wolf” that I thought was more typical of a collie dog:

Scout

A lovely complex fold that, although uniaxial, seems to hold itself together and self-stands without assistance. The management of the bi-colour features is also interesting, suggesting the feathers and white patches of a certain young and enthusiastic collie called “Scout”.

The head shape contains a lot of “judgement” folds that change the shape of the nose, jowels etc so I think I could, with some planning, get a better defined collie head, but I am pretty happy with my first fold.

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1086: Happy New Year (Year of the Rabbit)

| wonko

Proofing manuscripts that are soon to become Origami books is an interesting (and sometimes intense) business. While looking at a recent draft, I happened upon Nguyễn Tiến Kha’s lovely new “Lapin (Rabbit)” design and new I needed to test-fold it:

Phạm Hoàng Hải's rabbit

This is an intense fold – it eats up so much paper (I folded this little lovely from a 45cm square), but in the end we get a lovely bi-colour rabbit with all its bits in the right place, good proportions (although a little “top heavy”) and (with a little bum surgery) self-standing.

There are lots of origami rabbits, I have folded most of them, and this one is a charmer for a bunch of reasons. The fold sequence is ingenious, intense and really reliant of accuracy early – lots of pre-creasing provides good landmarks later on, and some lovely emergent geometry as you turn things inside out, round and about.

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1085: Eric Joisel’s “Birth 3”

| wonko

Eric Joisel was rare in the Origami community – he was a sculptor first, paper folder second. To him, concept was king, technique secondary – saying that however, few breathed more life into paper than him. The “Birth” sculpture series is particularly interesting as the subject is META – arising from the flat sheet , a figure fights to be born – pure genius in his hands.

Joisel's "Birth 3"

“Birth 1” was an abstract humanoid scrambling from the middle of a rectangular sheet, “Birth 1” was a prototype Gnome, and “Birth 3” was one of his signature Dwarves emerging from the edge of a rectangle. I have found no clues as to how Birth 1 or 2 were achieved, but, with some assistance (and a possible CP shared by @fishfolder I was able to have a stab at “Birth 3”.

The journey for this particular fold started in 2019 – our last International travel prior to the pandemic. We travelled to Hanoi in Vietnam. One of the pilgrimages on that trip was to a small outlet store for a village collective who were revitalising the art or making traditional Dó paper by hand. I bought a sheaf of sheets, all natural dyes from Zó Project and carefully shepherded them home in a postal tube safely tucked into our suitcase. I now had a perfect sheet for this model: Natural Dó with leaf inclusions, an almost fabric-like sheet 60x40cm. I needed the shave the deckle edge off one long side to give me a “square” reference, as the sheet was deliciously wonky – this left me with a sheet close to 1.8×1 in proportions.

views

Next, the protracted and painful process of laying in the creases to allow the base collapse. The first cut and the first fold are the hardest, as there is no room for error. I was determined not to lay in any unnecessary folds, to allow the otherwise untampered paper to shine. I used the 28 grid version of Joisel’s Gnome, because I like the proportion of arm:body:legs you get at this grid, but accurately laying in 28th-based creases was an exercise in measured mister really.

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1084: Square Spaceness

| wonko

I have a huge pile of “must get around to folding this” models and “Square Spaceness” designed by Alessandra Lamio is one of this legion:

1084: Square Spaceness - plan view

Take a square, divide it into a 16×16 grid, lay in strategic mountain and valleys and you get this almost Escher-like tessellation molecule (meaning you _could_ put multiples of these if you had a more expansive grid with some tweaks and a bit of smush).

Charged with the confidence Advent of Tess gave me, I knew it was time to give this a whirl. There are many long slight diagonal valleys that make up the bulk of the geometry for the inward sloping spirals, and the corner widget is ingenious as a lock, and adjusting the outside pleats lets it sit flat – love it.

1084: Square Spaceness - diamond view
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1083: Bodo’s Whale

| wonko

Cruising the socials, I noticed origamist Bodo Haag gifted newly drawn diagrams for a rather splendid whale, and I knew I needed to fold it:

Utilising the back and front colours of the sheet, we have a nicely white tummy and a dark back and tail fluke.

I had a lovely bit of wrapping paper (thx Rachel) and knew it would be lovely folded as something, and as a decorative ocean-going mammal it is perfect.

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1082: Advent of Tessellations

| wonko

It was late in the semester, I was looking for a folding project (to add to the other 4 already on my board – procrastigami strikes again) and noticed in my feeds a 25-day program by Madonna Yoder called “Advent of Tess”. I guess I am supposed to know about Advent, having worked in a Catholic boys school for 33 years, but… apparently it is the 25 days in December leading up to Xmas (learn something every day)

The idea was that Madonna released a CP and a video tutorial each day for 25 days, victims start with hexagons of paper pre-creased into 16-grid triangles, and collapse increasingly difficult combinations of tessellation techniques on the page.

1-5 (front/back/backlit): Cluster 6, cluster 4, cluster 6 alternating, cluster 4 alternating, HT6 closed alternating

The first few were easy, and collapsed simply, but then I decided I did not need the tutorials and proceeded to mark up the paper with the day’s CP and collapse from that. This approach came awry pretty quickly as the elements began to argue for the same real estate on the sheet and I learned that sequential development was way more sustainable.

The folds started with closed triangle twists (something I had done a lot of previously, so found accurate placement of these fairly easy. We later progressed to “open” triangle twists, which are much harder, and require a “setup” that uses paper tension to define the lines off-grid that were the sides of the triangle.

6-10 (front/back/backlit): Triangle double-bar wells, shrinking violet, studded wheels, radiant, dancing ribbons

We then progressed to closed hexagon twists (again, something I had done lots of beforehand) and refined them into “open” hexagon twists – a fascinating variation of a “star puff” of which I had passing familiarity.

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Bitter Sweet

| wonko

As I approached the date of my retirement, I genuinely struggled with how I could sum up my work-life, and how was going to say thankyou, personally, to so many people I have loved working with.

Collapsed blooms get shaped

It occurred to me that Origami could be my savior, and something hand-made and precious was the order of the day, so set about making Naomiki Sato’s pentagonal “Hybrid Tea” roses – in my opinion the zenith of his glorious rose designs. From a pentagon, with some skill, you sculpt a spiraling bloom of some 25 petals – genius as it is folds only – no cuts, no glue. Originally I was going to present them stemmed, but re-worked the idea to have them sit on calyxes instead.

I gave myself 3 weeks, and it turned out that was not really enough time, as each bloom from go to woe takes just over an hour – even when batch folding. It was a labour of love, and I got it done, and resulted in an amazing coincidence. I listed the recipients, and it totaled 33 – this number corresponded to the number of years I have been working at this current school – it was clearly meant to be.

Exacting pre-creasing

Acquiring paper, cutting perfect pentagons, calculating the relative size different between flower and calyx was the first task. I found if I cut the largest pentagon I could from an A3 sheet for the bloom, then the corresponding largest pentagon from an A4 sheet was perfect for the calyx.

Production-line techniques then ensued – precise pre-creases, pre-collapse wrangling and locating landmarks for secondary petal separation all have to be done first, and at this scale it is fiddly folding, and you need about 7 fingers on all of 3 of your hands. Once the dissected spiral collapse is complete the really hard part starts – shaping the petals to be soft curls in staggered cascades – quite a knack.

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1081: l’escargot

| wonko

I was doodling with a scrap of 2×1 note paper and arrived at what I think might be an original model:

le escargot

This little snail has a volumetric shell and body, along with some lovely poseable eye stalks.

le escargot views

Originality in Origami is tricksey, as most models recycle techniques from other folds, and the head/eye end uses a fairly standard waterbomb-accordion sink, but I cannot remember seeing it used in this way.

The shell is formed initially by outside reverse-folding the body and as such offers a colour change opportunity if folded with bi-colour paper.

I made a video tutorial if you want to fold it, or read further for a set of photo diagrams.

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1080: Invention of the Crane

| wonko

This is a very personal fold, as well as a lovely meta design:

Boice Wong's "Invention of the Crane"

The first thing most people learn when they start out in Origami is the traditional crane. This fold speculates the genesis of this model as a happenstance some time back in the mists of time. Interestingly, the first model I was taught, as an 11 year old, by a Japanese exchange student, was the crane.

Designed by Boice Wong, released as a crease pattern, I was decided to give it a whirl. If I am honest, I am not really happy with my first fold, and will probably attempt it again (having learned heaps in the folding). The CP can be found here: https://www.obb.design/cp#iocrane

Using a single square, no cuts, we have a lady in a traditional kimono, kneeling in front of a low table on which there is a single crane. The genius of this design is the model is complete – it looks finished all the way around (indeed I fashioned a lovely “bow” Obe at her back. There is a colour change making the table/crane a different colour to the girl (I decided the focus of this fold was the crane, so it ended up white – next time I might just paint it, or perform an additional colour change which is possible with this design but results in a clumsier crane I think).

Boice Wong's "Invention of the Crane" Views

This has taken me an age. Initially, I attempted to collapse the base only to discover it was inside-out, then trying to sort out what flaps did what job (kinda aided by sorta advice from Boice himself), and decided on the current flap assignment when trying to ascertain how to compose the kimono and hide the internal layers, yet still give me the hair fringe. Quite a wrestle in the end.

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Solving CPs

| wonko

Crease patterns, photo sequences and diagrams are the primary way of communicating the complexities and details of an origami model. While I am fairly capable of faithfully following even the most complicated diagram sequence, but still consider myself a newbie at solving CPs:

Origami-kimiro's CP

Sometimes the job is easier – lines are indicated as mountain/valley (red/blue or dashed/dot-dashed lines), other times you only get the major creases of the “base”, from which you then shape and tease the details from.

Origami-Kimiro, a Discord user on OrigamiDan released a CP for a simple domino toppling, and I knew I needed to give it a try:

my fold of Origami_kimiro's CP

Using 12″ duo Indigo Tuttle paper, I laid in the creases, oriented them in mountain/valley and marvelled as the paper collapsed into a base that was pretty close to done. Finishing the hand, colour changing to get the coat sleeve, posing and done.

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1079: Neelesh Kumar’s “Experience”

| wonko

All too rarely does an origami fold feel autobiographical, but when I first saw the CP and published fold of Neelesh Kumar’s “Experience”, I knew I needed to try it:

1079: Neelesh Kumar's "Wisdom"

From a SINGLE uncut square we have 2 separate fully formed characters – an elderly wizened “know it all” and a youngster at the beginning of a large book he is holding. The clever narrative thread is that they are connected by the the beard that morphs into the book.

1079: Neelesh Kumar's "Wisdom" - OLD

“Experience” is many things to many people: knowing when to shut the fuck up and when to assert your opinion, a willingness to pass on what you know, knowing what you do not know, knowing what to say when.

1079: Neelesh Kumar's "Wisdom" YOUNG

This clever boxpleat is one of many NK specialises in, and I am not sure i have done it justice, but the character of the model asserted itself in the folding process so I went with the flow.

I struggled with the whole transition between characters, and initially completely forgot the collapse that formed the book, needing to un-do the little person almost completely before doing the book crenellation. Based on a 40×40 grid, the face of the elder was feature-rich, but the face of the younger very plain – I sort of muddled along, thinking the concept was as important as the detail.

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