Now 2020 is winding up fast, and I say for the most part – good riddance. We decided to stay home, low key, but New Years Eve is not complete without “fireworks”:
I decided to fold a modular, found a relatively simple one then discovered it challenging because of volume and construction. This model is my fireworks – an explosion of colour and emergent geometry.
Folded from 90 separate pieces of paper, 30×1:2 rectangles and 60x 1/2:1 triangles – I decided to go with cherry blossom tones, the resultant “Star Pocket Kusudama”, designed by Sansanee Termtanasombat (Praew) from Thailand is a geometric treat indeed.
Exploring the geometric folds of Rebecca Gieseking, I was taken with cyclindric transformations:
Using calculated crease patterns, a cylinder can be “shifted” using a peculiar tapered spiral, or “bent” using a curved “gusset” – interesting stuff,
Folded using printer paper, I think it would look nicer with slightly heavier paper, the trick is accuracy and crisp creases. I must explore these techniques more.
This started as pure procrastination – I had marking and reporting to do but ….
Folded from a “live guide” photodiagram series produced by Daniel Brown, as part of a channel in a discord from another planet, irresistible as it is yet another variation of eastern dragon I knew I HAD to fold,
This little fellow is nearly naked – apart from some glue to hold in a wire spine and wires for arms and legs, he is otherwise folded only (hence some of the wayward seams and flaps). I quite like this unfinished appearance and think he will stay as is.
Folded from 90cm natural Kraft, it starts with a therapeutic 64 grid on the diagonal and goes to hell in a handbasket from then on. The basic folding is quite straight forward (as a Ryu master), this variation is a bit of a mashup between a 1.2 and the head of a 2.1 – the result is wonderfully complex and beautifully “Kamiya” in intent.
I decided to fold it in plain (both sides same) paper as the bi-color fold has a large gash of reverse side colour along the underside – I have used this to effect in both a 1.2 and a 2.1, so thought I would go differently this time. Interestingly (to me) this little chappie is folded with a sheet exactly 1/4 the size (and from the same paper roll) as my original 3.5 (a little Ryu Jin nerdistry there).
When saying ooroo to someone, you can give them flowers or something like this that lasts much longer:
Experimenting with some new season winter collection Ikea paper, I decided to try multiple simple roses that combined into a snub stellated icosahedron – clusters of 5 blooms, quite lovely,
I hope your move to the next phase in your life is wonderful, Colleen – thanks for all the support.
I have been sitting on this model for ages, trying to nut it out because although the module is relatively easy to fold, the proportions and construction of this modular ball is torturous to be polite:
I settled on a 6:11 rectangle for my module, and folded 33 of them (3 as a test), then began the task of working out how this works.
Each point is made of 3 modules, the final lock is REALLY hard for each vertex, then they twist and turn behind the 3 adjacent modules to have their spare ends pop up as one of 3 to make new points. I put together and disassembled a dozen times until I found the right order/morphology.
The result is not as tidy as I would like, and I may re-try it with a different proportion rectangle to screw further with the vertex shape, but I am pretty chuffed to have finally got it together – it was a real wrestle.
I remember folding another LED display, but cannot remember whose. This is a really efficient use of a single 15cm square to make a fully functional LED-style 7-segment digit:
The real skill here is hiding away the colour into flaps arranged symmetrically around the edge of the rectangular piece, so that you can open them out and change what is shown.
Continuing my exploration of Mi Wu’s new book “Duo Color Origami”, I present his “Skull Badge”:
A genius rendition of a skull icon complete with upper set of teeth. I enjoyed the fold sequence so much I folded a second one (to convince myself the first fold was not a fluke).
I recently got a copy of Mi Wu’s new book “Duo Color Origami” and knew there were models I had to try:
Colour change is a tricky thing, designing to deliberately form patterns with the reverse side of the page is a real skill and Mi Wu seems to have mastered it, his book contains many unique and very challenging models.
If one word sums up 2020, it has to be “cluster”. Sadly, in the Covi-19 era, we find at the centre of most clusters is a cluster-f*ck:
In desperate need of a fold, I turned to Xander Perrott’s e-book “Folded Forms” that I bought a while ago and settled on “Trillian” – a glorious 30 unit modular cluster that looks a little like a flower ball.
Apparently one of the symptoms of the plague was to smell a sweet smell like flowers:
That escalated rather quickly, but that is life in a pandemic age I guess. This “black flower ball” is “Mayhew”, a kusudama designed by Xander Perrott, a lovely thing indeed.
In an age of great confusion and concern over health, safety and social distancing, it is interesting (nay, alarming) to see the spike of “fake news” relating to the current Pandemic:
We learn via social media that Covid-19 was man-made, released as a viral payload from some weaponsied experiment (gone wrong, or not), is transmitted via 5G, and is defeated by injecting disinfectant and drinking bleach. We hear and watch idiot orange leader lie, contradict himself, blame storm, underfund, over-claim, then go and play golf while his country suffers.
We learn that some ffolk, tired of being “isolated” for a week or two in one of the most virus-ravaged countries chose to riot (hence magnify the problem) for their right to congregate, despite social distancing suggestions in place to save their lives – and we see them turn up, enraged, with guns, like they can shoot the fucking invisible enemy.
We hear from celebrities, entombed in their mansions, doing it tough because they are down to only domestic champagne, we hear of crop circles, conspiracies, complete shit uttered by people with access to the greater public, in the end (like this post) it is all NOISE, no SIGNAL.
It appears scientists and health workers DO know how to mitigate spread, that social distancing IS effective at arresting spread, that outbreaks are inevitable but manageble if there is a healthcare system in place applying rational and reasonable steps, and that the world will return to some version of normalcy slowly and cautiously.
This is “Zenith”, a 30 piece kusudama, designed by Xander Perrott (from his eBook “Folded Forms”), folded from duo red/natural Kraft. It is reminiscent of the shape we are seeing of virus (cells?), it was folded during a telly binge, it helped to calm me down when I think of work Monday: I am a teacher, for the past few weeks I have had had nearly normal classes (I teach mostly year 11 and 12, they were back in F2F after an extended period in ISO). This coming week, all students return to a tiny inner-city campus. 1700 boys, 120 staff, no room to swing a cat, social distancing impossible. Happy days.
Lately I have been folding a lot of faces – some free-form, some crease pattern (CP) based:
This is Mask #16, designed by Flynn Jackson, folded from cardstock, painted bronze.
I am beginning to get a “feel” for facial features – repetition and practice of free-folding helps me realise nuances between face structured, position of key anchors (brow ridge, nose, mouth) and how to set the eyes.
I vaguely remember folding lego in my original 365 journey back in 2011 and I am sure I remember following a set of diagrams. Looking back, the resource moved and has degenerated into low res Crease patterns:
Un-flummoxed, I set about re-acquainting myself with the fold – an intense little 12×14 grid, special collapses for pegs and pits.
Having folded one, by gridding a square cut from an A3 sheet, initially 16×16 (because that division is easy) then slicing off 2 and 4 units from adjacent sides to get to 12×14. the resultant block was fiddly, but I got back into “the zone” and the collapses were tidy.
I then realised that I could waste less paper by dividing the short side of an A3 in 3rds, then 6ths, then 12ths, when squaring along the long side I had to remove only a small sliver off the end (quite efficient use of the sheet) – the resultant grid made a much more satisfying sized block.
I set about making a few different colours, because.
All in all, they are just another brick in the wall. Mother, did it have to be so high?
Exploring the notion of curve-following corrugations, I drew a section of a sine wave, placed a series of graduated squares diagonally along it, constructed diagonal bisectors and extended them to the bounding boxes. then tiled, mirrored and flipped copies to construct a sine-wave that extended over an A4 page:
Although tiny, I used a stylus to score the necessary creases then spent a couple of hours delicately collapsing it.
I had been exploring corrugations that followed curved lines, as you do, and sort of worked out that you needed a quadrilateral face with equidistant gutters either side, but my rough approximations were foldable but not pretty:
Then I saw a published paper, about the same thing, that suggested square/rhombi arranged diagonally to follow the line, organised diagonal-based accordion pleats, and a scale factor bigger of the same shape for the gutter creases and bingo, problem solved.
Flat-foldability is a thing, there is lots of maths in it, but it is so satisfying to have manually derived something that was subsequently proven (*flex*).
