976: Snek

Now I am not a fan of sneks … at all … but folding one so cute seemed like a good idea at the time:

snek views

This is Christophe Boudias’ “Serpent”, and is a natty use of duo kami.

The detail here is worth noting – lovely mesmerising eyes, gaping mouth with fangs, and a lovely stripey body.

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966: Green Turtle

As part of an origami challenge on Fakebook, we were challenged to fold the Green turtle from Origami Pro #4, designed by Jang Yong Ik :

green Turtle designed by  Jang Yong Ik

I split off a square from a 70cm roll of black/natural Ikea Kraft and started the diagonal pleat pre-creasing.

Over a period of a couple of weeks, fitting it into life, the universe, and everything, I folded this intense model, really determined to enjoy the process.

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963: Hanji Ryu Jin

A colleague brought me back some Hanji paper from her visit to Korea, and I was wondering what to fold with it when I stumbled across a post on Facebook describing a modular money dragon fold.

Hanji Ryu

Designed by Hieu Dang, modified & diagrammed by Lien Quoc Dat ( tutorial: youtube.com/c/LQDchannel ) to be folded from 10 x bank notes, and thought it was worth a go. When I wrestled with an american dollar, deciding it too small for me to fold, I scaled up and cut 10 x 1:2 rectangles from a burgundy sheet of Hanji, and began folding.

Made with bank notes

This reminds me a LOT of Satoshi Kamiya’s Ryu Jin 3.5, but not as many scales, still, it s a time-consuming fold, and many of the techniques are repetitive, but manageable. I found the diagrams on the head really difficult to fathom, and the low resolution images made it difficult to to work out what’s what. See for yourself.

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925: Crouching Dragon

Origami dragons and wyverns seem to be a bit of a “holy grail”, with the more complex gaining almost mythic reputations for breaking folders spirits when they attempt them:

I came upon the diagrams for this charming model shared on fakebook, and it took a moment to hunt down the designer – Shaku on Flickr. Continue reading

837: (287/365) Jackson’s Chameleon

Looking for a nice, rich, challenging fold for the day, I knew I needed to try a model from Robert Lang:

This is his model “Jackson’s Chameleon” – a deliciously complicated model with all the chameleonic bits you expect.

Working with a slightly un-square square of light green washi, the pre-folding is fascinating, layer management and seemingly impossible moves abound – there were many times I thought I had screwed up, only to find out that it worked. Continue reading

813: (263/365) Llook out, there are Llamas!

PART 2: THE LLAMA, LIVE FROM GOLDERS GREEN
The llama is a quadruped
which lives in big rivers like the Amazon.

It has two ears,
a heart,
a forehead,
and a beak for eating honey,
but it is provided with fins for swimming.
Llamas are bigger than frogs. Continue reading

788: (238/365) Sea Turtle

Exploring Facebook, as one does, a delightful little sea turtle was posted in a group I am a member of by Migue Crm:

A simple 16×16 grid, some lovely waterbomb collapses for shell scales and some lovely flippers make this a fantastic model all round. Continue reading

779: (229/365) Karma Chameleon

I went looking for something reptilian to fold today (not sure why) and found this little charmer designed by Marc Vigo:

Using a series of rabbit ears on a 2×1 rectangle, you isolate legs, head and tail rather cleverly. Continue reading

736: (186/365) Stoopid Monkey!

Australian politicians are a weird lot. Not “American” (shoot first then barbeque something) weird, just an odd lurch from crisis to crisis and stab your mate in the back for a shot at leadership kind of weird:

A recently deposed Prime Minister (Mr Tony Abott) is being a bit of an arse clown in the media, white-anting his own party and providing gifts for our hapless opposition in terms of instability and leaks. Continue reading

730: (180/365) No Frills

Exploring Tanteidan Magazine 138, I noticed a rather lovely Frill Necked Lizard that I had not yet tried:
This is Gen Hagiwara’s Frilly, a torturous fold that spends lot of time isolating legs and tail from the large corner that would become the frill and head.


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611: (61/365) Pocket Godzilla

I remember as a kid being a fan of most things science fiction, and loving Japanese monster movies particularly:

There is something rather charming about a monster, effected by radiation, growing really big then being annoyed by greedy people, subsequently reeking havoc on highly populated areas of Japan. Continue reading

602: (52/365) Jason Ku’s Lizard

I bought some hand-made paper with inclusions from Daiso and wondered how it would fold, so looked for a punishing model to test it out:

This is Jason Ku’s Lizard – a lovely little critter with toes, an elegant tail and a funky face with gaping mouth and bulby eyes. Continue reading

566: (16/365) Dave Stephenson’s Tiny Turtle

Over the holiday break I have taken up swimming laps again. The aim was to be a little bit fitter and a little less fatter – it is sort of working. Naturally I wanted to choose a model for my last day swimming that itself swam, and a turtle/tortoise (who knows what the difference is) seemed to fit the bill:

This lovely little model is deceptively simple. Using a surprisingly small number of folds, a lovely sea turtle emerges from a waterbomb base. This photo reminds us that the fate of all wildlife is in our hands. We dwarf the natural world based on our effect on it. Continue reading

559: (9/365) Shuki Kato’s Western Dragon V3.1w

In a true testament to sheer bloody-mindedness and perseverance, I present to you for my self-satisfaction my first SUCCESSFUL attempt at Shuki Kato’s “Western Dragon”:

Some explanation: This is a western dragon because it has wings (westerners reason that to fly it needs wings). Potter nerds would naturally recognise that this is a “Hungarian Horntail“. It is version 3.1w because I used the “modified” instructions for v3 and then added some of my own variations to improve the model (I closed the breast and used the otherwise wasted flap as a bottom jaw allowing me to model a tongue).


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556: (6/365) Tiny Cobra

In exploring the “Tiny Snek” interwebs phenomenon, I stumbled across a money fold that resulted in a simple cobra:

This is a variation on Vu Dung’s Cobra, folded from a 2×1 rectangle. Although relatively simple it was made more difficult by the size of the fold – this is tiny but still has a recognisable hood and lovely mouth/set of fangs. Continue reading