reptile

1070: Massimo’s Western Dragon

| wonko

It is not every day you open your email and find a gift from a design legend. Friday Francesco Massimo sent me the diagrams for his Western Dragon, and I knew what I would be folding this weekend:

Francesco Massimo's "Western Dragon"

Having folded many dragons (western and not), I was keen to explore the morphology and layer management of this new model, and pretty soon realised paper selection is REALLY important for success with this model.

Essentially a “birdbase”, 2 structured have been grafted on (a Lang “KNL”-style dragon head, and a luscious set of wings), meaning that the “legs” would emerge from the centre of a tangle near the middle of the sheet, accumulating layers as they were formed.

Francesco Massimo's "Western Dragon" views

I decided to fold a maquette from thin crispy Kraft paper first – there were LOTS of baffling manipulations and I did not feel confident to risk nice paper on a first fold. In wrestling with the maquette, I “made good” the wing connection and body trimming, learned about initial angles of things like the neck (deciding I did not like the designed angle, changing it in my final fold), and the sequence for the collapse of the head – the pre-creasing strategy is prone to gross inaccuracies that impact the look and sit of the features, so adopted more of a CP mentality when I knew what was being used for what.

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1061: Bone Dragon

| wonko

Looking for a model to welcome in the new year, and also to further my Crease Pattern solving ability, I hoped this model would serve both purposes:

Bone Dragon

Part of a book I have helped edit prior to publishing, this is 1ctzH8jm0N2’s “Bone Dragon”, a CP and photodiagram sequence from the forthcoming book “Ori-Fancy 6”.

I started with a 90cm square, I divided into a 32 grid, then located the required diagonals, then begin allocating mountain and valley orientation to the creases before attempting the collapse.

Bone Dragon Views

There are lots of details here, and the initial collapse generates most of them – I buggered up the head collapse (rather I found the intricate point in point structure that would eventually become the horns too hard to do initially) but found it easy to do post-collapse, and was initially flummoxed by the feet structure until I realised a series of sinks needed to be closed-sinked, and another set needed to be open-sinks (hopefully this will be made clear in the final photo diagram annotations).

The body ends up being 30+ layers, making the necessary crimping for shaping really difficult with thick paper (I used natural Kraft paper) – there is a nice “bulk” to the body, and the body feels solid – thinner paper would make shaping less torturous.

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1054: Brian Chan’s Eastern Dragon

| wonko

When a legend graciously shares hand-drawn diagrams for a lovely simple Eastern Dragon, one simply has to give it a go:

Brian Chan's Eastern Dragon

This is an “Eastern Dragon” – interestingly most people in the west believe you need to staple wings on such a critter so that it can fly. Our eastern cousins accept that this sort of critter can fly, wings are not necessary for this activity.

This design was recently shared, luscious hand-drawn diagrams from @brianchandesigns, a gracious and fabulous gift to the origami community.

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1053: Jake the Snek

| wonko

My Mum had a large carpet snake take up residence atop her hot water system. Apparently he (she? who can tell?) was gentle, sleepy and knocked off some terracotta plant pots in his quest for a coil-spot:

Gen Hagiwara's snake

Over a period of a couple of weeks, he moved about, basking, slithering and generally being a snek, then he buggered off (as they do).

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Riccardo Foschi’s “Mushu” – revisited

| wonko

I have discovered I a very low tolerance of boredom, I neeeeeed to be doing something most of the time. When my students are doing assignment work I make myself available for consultancy and need tasks I can drop in an instant so I can help them – origami is often my goto:

Riccardo Foschi's MUSHU

This is a re-fold, but I like it more than my first fold. I chose 5 sections (that together become a 10:1 proportion rectangle) for ease of transport during the folding process. White/natural Kraft paper (23cm on the narrow), and some care and attention to accuracy. This little beauty is the result.

MUSHU scale

It is rare to see happy dragons – they usually are trying to be ferrocious and scary – this dragon reminds me of a puppy, a mischevious ball of energy that is waiting for you to throw the drool and scorchmark-covered stick again.

1025: Polly Wants a Cracker! Now!!!!!

| wonko

The post title reminds me of the punchline of a favourite joke: “What does a 10 tonne parrot say?”:

Gastronis Skeleton

This is a “Diatryma gigantea” (aka “Gastronis”) skeleton, designed by Mase Eiichiro based on fossil records. In real life this beastie would have been scary indeed.

Gastronis Skeleton views 1

Nicknamed “murder bird”, it seems paelontologists are divided as to whether it was a herbivore, carnivore or omnivore – it was HUUUGE – like 7ft tall, and the musculature marks around the beak suggest it had a titanic bite. Curiously it has no other “predator” characteristics – like a hook at the end of the beak or shredding talons on it’s feet, making it a confusing snarly. The first skeletal reconstruction of fossil remains happened in the early 1920s, and the result looked more like a 9ft emu (seems they had parts of a number of different animals in the one model).

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1024: Grogu, Mando in training

| wonko

For those up to date with “The Mandolorean”, the last episode reveal was “baby yoda’s” name – turns out it was “Grogu”:

Sebl's Grogu

Although loosely a space western, Mando is largely cutie Grogu and as many Star Wars references as is possible to fit into a loose plot (my opinion).

Sebl's Mando Helmet

Sebastien Limet designed a 2-part Grogu and published video tutorial on his Fakebook account – head and body are separate (I cheated and glued mine together – ssshhh!). The next day he did the same for a Mandalorian helmet – I made mine a little goth. More eye candy follows…

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1016: World Origami Days – Bahamut

| wonko

World Origami Days is a period end October-beginning November that is an international celebration of Origami. I decided to try a super complex model (fold until it fails) and successfully folded Satoshi Kamiya’s “Divine Dragon (Bahamut)” on the first attempt:

Satoshi Kamiya's Bahamut

Rarely does a first fold work out but I kept folding and it did, much to my surprise and delight. The fold sequence is particularly punishing and describes a bit of an enigma of a model – the balance between paper thinness and size. I chose 80gsm 100cm square Kraft paper and at this size/thickness it was tough going in places indeed. The body and legs are incredibly thick compared to the single layer wings – a bit of a puzzle if you wanted to fold it small.

Satoshi Kamiya's Bahamut Views

A “Bahamut” is a monster from the “Final Fantasy” franchise, and is an odd mix of a lizard, dragon, Godzilla…thing.

The detail here is terrifying. Thick, muscular 4-toed feet, thick dragonny tail, chest sporting a 6 pack (make that a whole slab), arms with 4 claws, complex and snarly horned head and glorious wings with an extra set of hands atop them – quite a formidable beastie.

This fold took me the best part of the weekend to complete, and I used a little glue (shhhh!) to tidy gaping seams and a little MC to stabilise his (? only they would know the gender) posture and basic body morphology.

Satoshi Kamiya's Bahamut Scale and detail

If I were to fold this again I would use thinner prettier paper, but there are sections where front and back are visible, so the model is not really suited to duo paper – perhaps double tissue or unryu. I had forgotten how satisfying Satoshi Kamiya models are to fold, and how wonderful it is to just get lost in the folding process (I took no progress pics, soz) – it was terrific paper-based therapy. There are so many complex techniques here to isolate and separate body elements, genius design indeed.

1011: Foschi’s “Gecko”

| wonko

I had a 12cm square of thin crisp Kraft and decided to try the Riccardo Foschi CP for his gecko. This required a 32 square grid, making resultant pleats 4mm or less each:

Riccardo Foschi's Gecko

I figured this was a good test of my accuracy, and found it quite relaxing but fiddly with my nerve-damaged hands. I am working on my CP deciphering skills, and this seemed quite straight forward.

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997: Western Dragon

| wonko

Western dragons are an attempt to make sense of a mythical flying beast – the whole wing-thing appears necessary, and the morphology is usually based on a giant lizard:

Redpaper's Western Dragon

This is a test fold of Redpaper’s “Western Dragon”, well my rendering of it at least, from his forthcoming book.

I have taken liberties, having folded it a couple of times to try and work out the most dense parts of the design, and required sheet size.

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996: Eastern Dragon

| wonko

Currently editing a book including designs by “Redpaper”, I decided to road-test his “Eastern Dragon” – an intense fold on the diagonal of a square.

I tried this with a 35cm square of japanese tissue and was unable to realise most of the detail, so scaled up to a 65cm square of duo kraft and found it more manageable.

Red Paper's Eastern Dragon

There is a lot to take in here, the front claws are cute, the facial expression reminds me of the chameleonic monster from “Monsters Inc” but I think this model is really challenging on a few levels.

The back legs are an intense ride that results in fairly clumsy toes, but it is free standing on them in tripod and the rather odd tail. The neck is bent back and forward to point the head forward. If I were to re-fold this, I think large format double tissue would help, and there is so much paper in the body that I am sure you could make that more textured.

The fold sequence contains some mystery meat also – the formation of the legs is a bit smooshy (or it was for me), and the antlers were also tricksey, but it was an interesting ride. Keep your eyes out for the new book – there are some fab folds in it for experienced folders.

994: Mushu

| wonko

Riccardo Foschi frequently shares crease patterns for his new designs on social media. When I saw “Mushu” I knew I had to try and fold it:

Foschi CP

It is rare to find a “happy” dragon, but this one beams a positive energy that makes you smile. There is lots of detail to take in – the head has branched horns, smiling eyes, lovely colour-changed curly whiskers, nostrils, teeth, a lovely wiggly tongue, lower jaw and a beard. A lovely set of back spikes, each leg has 3 toes and the beautiful fan tail caps off the beastie.

Mushu

Made over a period of a week, from 5x 2:1 rectangles of odd spotty black Ikea Kraft. Sections form variously tail, legs, body and head modules, all of which ingeniously interlock without the need for glue. Riccardo also states that it can be made with a single 10:1 rectangle, but I thought that would be too wasteful when cut from a paper roll, so decided on the modular approach.

My problem with crease patterns is that, although they show the major creases, they do not really hint on the shaping or fold order. The head, in particular, took me a while to sort out. I decided, contrary to the designers photo, to fold the legs differently – I think they look more natural this way (but I folded forward, backward, forward and back many times before deciding on this configuration).

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987: Ryu Zin Junior 2.1

| wonko

Rounding out my Ryu journey, I decided to use a small scrap of Kozo left over from another project to fold Jason Ku’s Ryu Zin Junior 2.1:

Jason Ku Ryu Zin 1.2

While sharing some of the nomenclature of the Satoshi Kamiya chinese dragon series, this little chap is markedly different on every level. I found a set of photo diagrams lovingly annotated by Daniel Brown, and thought I would give is a whirl.

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Chinese Dragon in Repose

| wonko

My usual line “if you find interesting paper, get it and I will make you something out of it” has been the start of many fascinating journeys:

Mikiller觅晨’s modular dragon

Peter and Majella travelled to Japan, and found some lovely paper – one, a sheet of hand-made natural Kozo with botanical inclusions screamed out for something delicate and textured. I had intended to return to Mikiller觅晨’s modular dragon, having already folded it large, I thought it might be interesting to fold it tiny and trap it in a shadowbox frame.

The handover
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