I fell down an internet rabbit hole and stumbled across a Graeme Norton interview of Benedict Cumberbatch who, during a nature documentary commentary seemed singularly unable to say the word “penguin”:
I was approached by fellow Aussie origami designer Gary Fonarik to test his ‘Fairy Penguin” diagram. I fired up a 15cm blue/white square and completed his charming design. The result, to me, looks a lot like a penguin chick wanting to be fed by an exhausted parent.
Then Steven Casey, another Aussie origami designer asked me to try his (more correctly names “Little Penguin” as the scientific community has moved away from the Fairy label apparently).
Both design are charming, and I will add them to my growing flock of penguins. Fun instance of synchronicity.
One Piece aficionados know that a Den Den Mushi is a telepathetic snail used as an important communication device in-world:
Communicating via snail beings new meaning to the term “snail mail” but I remember seeing the snails in the Live-action remake and wondered if they existed as Origami.
To my delight, Tong Liu (G.T. Liu) designed one and released the diagrams in Bogota 2013’s conference booklet so I knew I needed to folded it.
I decided to try using some of my Kozo and Cotton paper that I made at Dion Channer’s Paper Mill in Gympie back in February 2024. The paper from this session was fairly soft and a little fabric-like (because, like, I really did not know what I was doing), but with a little TLC and some treatment it was perfect for this design.
As part of my 5-Aussie Animal series, I present my Glossy Black Cockatoo:
As an endangered species, I am thrilled to be able to have a go at representing it in Origami. Reference images of the Cockatoo show it has a striking red flash in it’s tail features in an otherwise black bird.
Folding this model has shown me how hard it is to photograph such intense black paper.
Folded from a 60cm square of black Kozo with sugar cane inclusions – the resultant model has flecky shiny deep black, and is quite gorgeous. I rendered the red flash with red Kozo containing mango leaves – I laminated strips over the pleated tail feathers and am really happy with the result.
I decided to go with a “about to land” pose, so fashioned a wire stand with a ground outline shape that is meant to mimic the outline of the shadow of the landing bird – I think it works – what do you think?
After a lot of research looking for cockatoo origami diagrams, I found a diagrammed sequence designed and diagramed by Arthur Champigneul in the 2022 Origami de Bogota conference proceedings – this design forms the basis of my model – I have added some features and shaping to more closely align to the Glossy Black Cockatoo.
Working on an Australian Wildlife series, naturally I had to include Satoshi Kamiya’s lovely Green Tree Frog:
I had a day-glow lime green sheet of Hanji in my stash, gifted to me from a collegue who brought it back from Seoul a few years back. I decided I wanted to treat it and colour it with some of my acrylic inks.
I misted the sheet with water, wet a large glass window, rolled the damp hanji onto the wet glass and then coated it with a thick coating of methyl cellulose (MC).
As part of an Aussie animal series, it would be wrong to not include a Kangaroo:
The best Origami Kangaroos are designed by Gen Hagiwara – this is Gen’s 2013 design, a lovely mother ‘roo with a joey in her pouch. Fortunately it featured in Tanteidan Magazine #147 – part of my growing collection of JOAS origami magazines.
Starting with a 50cm square of rust Lokta paper – a Nepalese paper made from the inner bark of a species of Daphne, a remarkably durable paper that has natural resistance to bugs, mildew etc.
There are only a few origami figures I MUST have in my collection – Steven Casey’s “Echidna” is one of these:
This adorable little monotreme is covered in one of my favourite square-grid tessellations, but skillfully crafted to allow all the other body bits to be where they need to.
I bought the British Origami Society booklet describing how to fold this treasure as soon as I knew it existed, and have folded it a few times now. Some sequences are nightmare fuel – this one is just so enjoyable to fold.
I recently received a shipment of paper from Origami-shop.com and in it was a 65cm 11 colour pack of the NEW Shadow Thai paper. I last bought it in 40cm square form but it was THICK so to my delight this version is thinner and takes complex folds really nicely. I chose this fur-like colour because it most closely matched the quill and hair colour of an echidna.
One of the few applications of the Miura-Ori (map fold) that I can tolerate folding is to make the fantail of Satoshi Kamiya’s Lyrebird.
I had a half-sheet of leaflitter paper in my stash (bought some 8 years ago) and thought it fitting to fold a bird that lives in the leaflitter out of it.
This is not my first fold of this beautiful model, but it is my best. Having good, thin, tough paper helps as accuracy is everything when folding the base – so many opportunities for crease misalignment exist and, as the paper thickness ramps up, there is bulk there.
Interestingly, the “bulk” ends up being in the body area which then naturally “fattens up” the bird in a really naturalistic way.
Browsing a Korean Origami Convention book (the 6th – 2015), as you do, I stumbled across a Platypus I had not seen before:
Designed by Fernando Gilgado, this genius design uses duo paper to isolate the beak, tail and legs from the body in a really interesting way.
After some simple pre-creasing, you collapse to a base that looks really useful for all sorts of long critters with head/tail and 2 pairs of legs (like a crocodile, say)
I first folded these little critters, designed by Robert J Lang, using a square cut from an A3 printer paper sheet back in 2011 as part of my original 365 project:
Remarkably, even with that terrible paper, all the features of the critter were present however not very refined.
Australians call these “Slaters”, but they also go under the name “wood lice” because these little isopods are found in decaying vegetation – which is why I decided they should be folded from Mango Leaf paper. It makes this fold a bit “meta” in that the critter is folded from mulberry paper that contains leaf litter.
The fold sequence is exacting, forming trapezoidal molecules for each of the 14 legs, along with antennae and a rather beautiful segmented shell. This model appears in a few of Robert’s books, I folded this one from “Origami Insects 2” – a rather splendid volume from Origami House in Japan. bought from Origami-shop (even though, strictly speaking, it is not an INSECT….).
I decided to fold two so we could see one open and one curling up into a little armoured ball – they do this when in danger.
The life of a male praying mantis is not all beer and skittles – inattentive and less nimble males often become a post coital snack for their partners in a brutal twist on “the circle of life”:
This is a pair of Satoshi Kamiya’s Praying Mantis, and this may well be my longest fold (in total elapsed time) to date. Two and a half years ago (the year before I had retired), I sat down with a crispy 55cm square of Kraft paper and began folding the maquette for this model (the brown one). I was stressed, it ate up an afternoon and calmed my racing brain but I got tired, lost my place and then mental fog set in and I could not for the life of me work out how to do the next step (making the little barbs on the inside of the front legs).
Determined to return to it the next day, I tucked the model into the open book I had in my book stand, put it away and … ignored it for 2.5 years. I am not sure my book “Works of Satoshi Kamiya 3” appreciated being splayed open for all that time and is now, finally, resting closed with the rest of my Origami library.
I finally had the “perfect” mantis paper – pre-coated green Unryushi tissue from Kami paper store, purchased a month or so ago when we were in Melbourne. I cut a perfect 50cm square from this deliciously thin and crisp paper and began folding. I was fired up to return to the partially finished but stalled fold and give it another go – how hard could that be?
I folded the green up to where I had stopped with the brown, then realised the next step was actually pretty simple (just not clearly diagrammed – representing such complex 3d manipulation in a series of line drawings is really hard, I know), so was able to take both the maquette and green production fold all the way to the end of an astonishing 271 step sequence.
The design is genius, and relatively efficient – interestingly there are triangle sections of paper folded away into the middle legs that is the only “waste”. Via a torturous process of isolating, crenellating and thinning the entire morphology of a lethal stick insect emerges from the tangle.
As an apex predator, the praying mantis is the perfect killing machine. Large swiveling eyes, sensitive antennae on a fully articulated head, complete with chomping mouth parts. Perfectly proportioned and armored thorax sporting 2 sets of thin legs and a pair of lethal clamp-like razor fists. Wings and a lovely plump pleated abdomen finish the features of this astonishingly complete insect – all from an UNCUT square of paper – just wow.
It is a well known fact that Australians MADE up the illogical collection of animal parts we then called a Platypus:
Ducks bill, fur, poisonous spines, webbed feet, lays eggs, feeds young milk, lives under water … LOL … then only people silly enough to believe this are tourists, right?
One of many benefits of networking at an origami conference is that you get to mix in the real world with talented designers – if you are lucky they share their designs with you.
Browsing through the latest JOAS Tanteidan Magazine, as one does, I came across a seemingly simple but delicious little pentagon box in the shape of an acorn designed by Tomoya Kariya:
Exploring the sequence, I figured I could shepherd some of my hand-made paper through it, and reasoned that banana paper would make a beautiful cap, lemongrass and cotton paper would contrast nicely for the kernel.
I turned to my stash and discovered I had some smaller offcuts, so set about making matching 6″ squares of the rough but beautiful paper.
Folding hand-made botanical fiber paper is really hard on the finger tips – the lemongrass paper is actively spikey, but, being strategic and deliberate when manipulating tough fibers that lay on creases, I was able to coax the paper to take shape.
I LOVE the result – the handmade paper is PERFECT for this fold, it enhances the organic shape and makes it feel like a precious relic.
1: Knock knock. 2: Who's there? 1: Amos 2: Amos who? 1: A Mosquito. <insert hysterical laughter of a little kid (me) amused by the first dad joke he can remember his dad telling him> True story.
I have bought many sheets of the most amazing paper, all dutifully stored in my “cave”. Over 10 years ago, I purchased a full sheet of black Unryushi single tissue because I HAD to have it, but having NO plan to use it.
Unryushi tissue is beautiful, painfully thin (24GSM) but gloriously adorned with visible mulberry fibres. It comes being about the stiffness of facial tissue – I misted a large window with water, rolled the sheet onto the wet glass (shiny side down) and then added a coat of MC (Methyl Cellulose) to the back side, removing air bubbles from the centre out.
Even wet, the Unryu is really strong, but to make it foldable I needed to crisp it up. I managed to cut a 60cm square, leaving a >12inch selvage for another project.
The latest Tanteidan magazine had a enthralling Mosquito design by Yoshio Tsuda and I knew I NEEDED to try it, but lots of the model is 12+ layers thick, I knew I needed some crazy thin paper … hence the Unryu. I decided to fold Version 1 of the Mozzie, knowing that Yoshio also published a crease pattern for his revised design – that will do for another day.
Perusing origami books, as you do, I chanced upon a delightful little pelican:
Designed by @tommy03, making use of a beige/white duo 6″ kami square, this delightful model captures the essence of a pelican better than any other I have seen.
“What a wonderful bird is a Pelican – whose beak can hold more than it’s belly can.” – A rhyme my mum used to say to me as a little tacker – hoping to gift this to another mother tomorrow.
