There is so much happening in the world of Origami design, it is amazing to see new models emerging of every subject imaginable. I am working on editing/test-folding a bunch of Chinese diagrams currently, and thought I should fold this beauty to check on the sequence in the diagrams:
I started with 2x 45cm squares of Kraft – intending to fold BOTH the landed and flying versions of this model (yes – 2 different forms in the same model!), reached a part of the diagram I could not get past – I ruined, ragequitted and snowballed one of the sheets in frustration … only to realise the impasse just required a different view of the model.
Plunging on, through a challenging sequence, I muddled to the end and the result is quite amazing. I like that someone has focussed on the “on the ground” version of a model usually depicted in flight with wings extended. These critters were land dwelling, occasionally in the air, and their body morphology is full whack – prolly why they no longer exist (except as remnant critters like bats). Tapejara’s were thought to be particularly agile fliers and formidable predators, remnants of these have been found in Brazil.
This is part of an astonishing collection of new designs coming soon as a book from origami-shop.com and showcases some amazing layer /sheet management. I _almost_ want to go back and now fold the flying version of this model … almost.
Fun, challenging fold. I think folding this critter much smaller represents a huge challenge – the pleats that form the back legs/toes at this size ended up being 4mm – my fat clumsy fingers struggled to fold these accurately (and you form these pleats part way through the sequence – not in pre-creasing). Going smaller will be “interesting” for a more nimble folder.
When I first read Frank Herbert’s “Dune” series of books, it was the mid 70’s and I was a teenager. The expansive universe captured my imagination like little else.
Dune Part 2 has just been released in cinemas, and the Denis Villeneuve adaptation is visually stunning. On planet Arrakis (Dune), a chosen method of air travel is the “Ornithopter”, described as an insect-like flapping machine.
’Thopters in the current movie series are astonishing, if illogical from an engineering perspective. Variously, ‘Thopters have 2 to 12 wings, each move independently in a coordinated buzz to provide controlled lift and thrust.
The origami world has a few simple ‘thopter designs, most modelled on the 80’s David Lynch film adaptation, so I thought I would have a go at designing one from scratch. Initially I thought to harness an existing base, but decided I wanted 12 wings, in groups of 3, and wanted landing gear, some paper for a fuselage and various flaps for some simple detailing.
There are many design methodologies I could have employed. Circle packing (each circle centre representing the vertex of a stickey outer bit), 22.5 folding to facilitate the point-splitting needed for so many separate flaps, but settled on box pleating.
First I sketched out a rough crease pattern (CP). 12 points along opposite edges of a square. The downside of this arrangement was the points ended up tiny – way too small for the wings. Rearranging them symmetrically allowed me to include extra flaps for landing gear, cockpit and more. Designing the collapse along a 2 unit strip of the central axis also gave me the bulk for the fuselage. I calculated I could achieve this with a 48 grid.
For a system to be considered “Turing Complete”, it must be able to be used for completing any computational problem. In the world of DIGITAL Turing Complete setups, these computations are achieved using simpler binary operations (like NOT, AND, OR, NOR, etc.).
In a paper recently released by Mathematicians Thomas C. Hull and Inna Zakharevich, they propose flat-foldable crease patterns for origami “processors” that simulate a number of simple binary operations (namely NAND, NOR, AND, OR, NOT and a few ancillary operations) making the theoretical proposition that flat foldable origami is Turing Complete.
I folded a few of the paper’s logic gates, and made a video of how they work – have a look:
Although this is a little nerdy, I can at least conceptualise the idea that a network of interconnected origami processors could, theoretically, actually do something useful. Technical challenges exist with having such crease patterns co-exist on the same sheet, in sufficient quantities to represent anything other than single bits (0/1 or On/Off or True/False), but the idea is none the less tantalising.
Comes the time of year when we tell little kids that a morbidly obese stranger in a red suit breaks into their house (by coming down a chimney or other entry point if there is no chimney), eats some random snack, feeds a portion of that snack to a reindeer (who has a birthmark on it’s nose) and then leaves presents, regardless of whether you have been an entitled little shit all year, or a saint:
As a parent I was complicit in this lie until my kids (fairly early on) cottoned on to the fact that this whole thing was so very unlikely, and merely a mechanism for justifying a mound of presents under the xmas tree.
I wanted to try out the new paper pack of Satogami I got from Origami-shop and this festive fold seemed like the perfect opportunity given the latest Tanteidan magazine (which contains it’s diagrams) arrived this week also.
Duo Satogami is quite thick. I bought a paper pack of 58cm squares, mixed colours and love the vibrancy of the red/white, and also love the texture of the paper. I _want_ to report that pre-creasing Satogami was easy … but … I really struggled to my the reference folds and to fold accurately because of the thickness and texture. The paper reverses fairly poorly also (meaning I had to correct lots of folds for accuracy as I went to ensure alignment of layers and edges during more complex moves.
Things have been busy, lots happening in the real world so it is sometimes nice to get lost in a fold or two:
This lovely fully 3D skull, designed by Naito Yukata and wrangled from a 3:1 rectangle has been quite a journey.
The pre-creasing was fiddly but laid in landmarks that then aided the staged collapse. I found it easier to collapse parts of the model separately, then open the sheet back out to do the next section, laying in the final resting creases as I went – this meant that the “all at once collapse of the top part of the skull was easier.
The teeth introduced a lovely layered pleat structure I had not seen before and the overall shaping is a bit of an art I think.
There are many models I just HAVE to have in my folio – David Brill’s “Double-Star Flexi-Cube” is one such model:
I first folded this back in my first 365 origami project (the original reason for this blog). At the end of the first 365 I held a charity auction and the original white DSFC provided a rather nice amount for my nominated charities.
I have only just got around to folding it again. This model requires A-series paper proportion, so I decided (insanely) to use A7 sheets, and chose 2 bold colours (red – yes that is RED, my phone camera seems singularly unable to photograph it, and purple) because I had 4 sheets of each. Each A4 sheet is cut into eighths – 64 sheets (32 for each cube)
deliciously, you fold 2 identical stars then, by the magic that is geometric topology and strategically placed “hinges” you can morph a star into it’s own negative (a cube with a star-shaped hole) then nest them inside each other.
I love this to bits, but must admit to having (again) to cheat on this model – the “locks” are not very positive, it tries to pull itself apart and there is little locking it together (bar some overlapping edges, simple flap tabs into pockets etc) – this is a bit of a pity. I used small strategically placed glue spots to stop it exploding every time I even looked at it suddenly.
Flexi-geometry is remarkably satisfying to play with, the geometry of this cluster is delicious.
Although (technically) a re-fold, the last time I attempted to fold this I had a partial crease pattern and a broken incomplete set of instructions in Russian, and just muddled along. I am not sure the resultant model even looked like Wall-E, but I was happy to sort of nut out a scheme for making his tracks.
I stumbled across a set of partial diagrams by “Tosummerny” in Chinese that seemed to surface more of the actual process, so decided I had to have another go.
I went big – 90cm square – seems excessive …but … I have another exhibition pending and thought this might make a good display piece if it ended up tidy enough.
The diagrams clarify the construction of the pleats necessary to form the main body, and how they cleanly articulate to make the beautifully treaded tracks, and also simplified what I had in my previous attempt mangled together to form the eyes.
This model has been on my “must fold” for ages, but I had only ever seen a CP and could never make head nor tail of the design. I saw a rendition on Origami Dan Discord and, after an enquiry it turns out there exists an unofficial diagram, drawn by Hua Ge that guides folders through this terrific insect:
I split a sheet from a new 60cm roll of medium weight Kraft and began folding. There is a load of pre-creasing, primarily setting up the high-density collapses to make the long thin legs, so accuracy early on pays dividends later.
Uncharacteristically, this model uses loos pleat structures to bulk out the body, define the wing covers and head/thorax/abdomen, with a deliciously complex un-sink to make the head-thorax join. Interestingly this model also has a super-detailed head/face – it reminds me so much of the hoppers in “A bugs life”, and it has real “cute” personality, as much as a locust can be cute.
Tucked away in an inconspicuous corner of the deserted clearing, nestled almost invisibly among the leaf litter, the first signs of civilization were found in the form of a rough-hewn but definitely hominid-worked paper offering. For whom, to what, why … we shall never know:
Followers of the blog will notice occasional references to paper making pursuits. This post looks at the most recent results of a paper making workshop I attended in early July 2023. I had previously (back in 2019) been a member of PAQ (Paper makers and Artists, Queensland) but found full time work made attending events difficult. Now I am retired I have more freedom, so reapplied for membership.
The group’s interests in paper are diverse – from botanical paper making, monoprinting, encaustics, stitching, collage, pulp sculpture and more – my interests are (fairly narrowly?) folding, but it is important to have ones interests informed by a wider palette so I am very much the learner in that group.
Previous workshops I made sheets with finely beaten banana stem and cotton display board, day lily and lemongrass pulp, and still have some of the paper from that session. This session we pulped banana stem (coarsely this time) and mixed it with lemon grass, Philodendron, and South African Pigeon Grass stem, in various combinations. The pulp was added to water, then a suspension-aid made from water soaked chopped okra, which generates a mucilage that makes the vat water more goopy, helping the pulp to stay in suspension longer before settling out. The results were much coarser paper, but it presented an interesting challenge to see what I could fold from it.
I first pressed then dried my sheets, brought home still dripping. I carefully separated them from their couching sheets (old torn up bed linen) and selected sheets to process further. Using a fairly stiff batch of Methyl Cellulose, I stuck sheets to my glass and let them dry, reasoning (correctly it turns out) that the MC would make the sheets more pliable and bind the fibres more closely together (given some of them were very loosely bound, this seemed like a good plan).
So a fairly well known fact in Origami circles is that there are Origami Museums, few compare in size to the Spanish one in Zaragoza. When Jo and I had decided to spend time in Barcelona, we discovered Zaragoza was doable day trip from Barcelona Sants regional train station, so a plan was hatched.
Barcelona Sants is a regional rail hub, different to the metro. We will from depart here in a few days for Province, but this station also provides access to many other places in Catalunya and beyond. After locating our platform ( via a very helpful man at the Information counter), we had our bags (and everything else) xrayed before arriving on the platform to find the train already boarding.
We boarded AVE-S112 High Speed train, allocated seats a lot like an airplane, and took off. The train sped underground until it cleared the central city and burst out into the light as farmland flew by. For a lot of the journey the train was topping 295 km/h as it hurtled stop to stop.
After a little over an hour, we arrived at Zaragoza train station, and de-trained, got some refreshments then headed over to the Bus Station, to catch a C1 circle line bus, and rode it the remaining half way around to the terminus. After a brief bit of nav we were picking through the back streets to EMOZ, located on the 2nd Floor of Centro de Historias, Plaza San Agustín 2.
I had been in contact with the museum ever since there seemed a chance for me to visit, and it was lovely to finally meet an online friend named Jesús Artigas. We nerded out a bit, talked about the current exhibition and about Yoshizawa’s works, and particularly the work of Eric Joisel.
The museum has, on display a number of Joisel’s original works, including one of his gnome orchestras, his large-scale Rhinoceros and his large scale Pegasus.
Jesús let us sneak peak in the store room at Joisel’s large Hippopotamus also, all master works from a genius artist much missed.
We talked folding, design, and it turns out he is working on an interesting origami publication of endangered Spanish animals, and asked if I was interested in test folding closer to publication date. What an honor indeed, naturally I said yes. That should be fabulous and something else to be involved in when I finally return home.
We parted company with the promise of future collaboration, then Jo and I took our time appreciating the many rooms of exhibits. It was good to see so many original works from legends in the field, including Victor Coeurjoly, Robert Lang, Junior Fritz Jaquett, Kashiwamura, Jozsef Zsebe, a host of different Vietnamese designers, and even a tiny work from Yoshizawa himself. We are not worthy.
The museum also offers informative information about the paper/folding traditions of many countries. It is interesting that many different schools of folding crafts emerged independently with the introduction of paper and paper-like materials. We also saw some very early traditional folds pioneering skills from historical giants that modern day origami designers stand on the shoulders of.
The feature artist at the moment is Vivian Berty, with a number of rooms devoted to her colourful, figurative and representational varied art practice. Such a riot of colour and range of simple to elegant models, compositions and modular works.
It felt like home for me, to be surrounded by an art form I have spent a lot of my life exploring. Nerd-feasts come in every flavour, and this was one of mine.
After leaving EMOZ, we reversed our journey to Zaragoza Delicias rail station, grabbed a late lunch and then our train back to Barcelona. I am sure I gushed, Jo was very tolerant of a very happy nerd. If I get the opportunity I would like to visit again, as well as explore the other origami museums of the world.
One of many habits I have developed, when travelling, is to “art bomb” the places we stay:
I take origami paper on holiday (like, who doesn’t, right?) and like to hide a finished cute model somewhere in our accommodation, restaurant, ferry, funicular or whatever for either the owner or a subsequent guest to discover – meant as a nice little surprise.
As an Australian, I try to include aussie flora or fauna, and memorize the fold.
If I am to be completely honest, I am astonished I have never folded Jo Nakashima’s “Kangaroo” before. It is a little charmer. I have a pack of indigo Tuttle paper that will be perfect for this, so it is sorted (apart from the practice needed to fold it from fading memory).
Avid noticers of this blog will realise that, since 2011, I have been rapidly expanding my abilities as a folder. Like most people, my first ever origami experience (apart from largely unsuccessful paper planes) was an origami crane (Tsuru) – taught to me as a boy of 11 yrs by a Japanese exchange student. A few years back I completed my task of learning how to fold Satoshi Kamiya’s “Ryujin 3.5”. This fold is not unrelated to both events:
Crane to complete Eastern Dragon is quite a journey, learning all sorts of new techniques and refining skills along the way and this fold celebrates that very journey. Originally designed and folded by Brandon Wong (@ThePlantPsychologist) – I first saw his fold on Instagram, and then photos of it on OrigamiDan (a discord server I am a member of) and vowed, one day, to fold it.
Brandon very kindly published the Crease Pattern along with photos of his fold, and right now I am rapidly learning to solve crease patterns so the perfect storm emerged after retiring I have time to tackle more ambitious folds.
After gridding the 90cm square, I set about laying in the exacting additional creases needed, including a puzzling pythagorean hinge line and some baffling level-shifters. Collapsing was a …. process. Apparently I “parachuted” the model – starting at the edges and working towards a bulging centre is termed parachuting (which is something I must address) until it more or less sat flat. After checking in with Brandon (isn’t the internet amazing) he suggested a fix for the only collapse kludge I had on his right shoulder.
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:
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.
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:
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.
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.
“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.
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.
