animal

1168: Cotton-top Tamarin

| wonko

As a once obsessed biology teacher, I am very interested in critters that are distant relatives – in this case the group of “New World Monkeys” contain some astonishing and cute members – few cuter or more critically endangered than the Cotton-top Tamarin:

Origami primates are fairly rare, but the more exotic specimens hardly ever get a representation. It was wonderful to see that in a soon to be published book “Origami Oddities”, by Kunsulu Jilkishiyeva that this Tamarin was designed so thoughtfully by her.

Test folded from a 45cm square of peach/natural matt Damul Kraft paper from origami-shop.com, the sequence is fun, tricky and contains some very satisfying collapses.

There is heaps of opportunity to go nuts with the shaping here, as the head is expressive (yet has no facial features – yet), the hands are fully fingered, the back legs in the original design were points (I rendered them more as paws), the tail is lovely and lively, the “cotton top” is fun.

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1167: Aye Aye

| wonko

Primates are a diverse collection of animals that contain us hominids, apes and a variety of “monkey-like” critters. One of the most primitive, obscure and endangered is a type of Lemur, native to Madagascar, called the Aye Aye:

Largely nocturnal, and generally feared because of it’s slightly crazed appearance and creepy long fingers, apparently it uses its fingers to reach into decaying wood to pluck out juicy grubs – yum. I had never seen anything like it rendered in origami until I was proofing a soon to be published book by Kunsulu Jilkishiyeva titled “Origami Oddities”. I knew I had to try it.

Using a 45cm square of Damul Kraft (from Origami-shop) in brown/natural, the pre-creasing was fairly straight forward, the first collapse is complex (an “everything at once” style collapse I love). Isolating the features is pretty straightforward, but this is not a beginners fold, it contains some deliciously complicated maneuvers.

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1166: Year of the Snek

| wonko

Doom-scrolling on Insta, as you do, I came across an astonishing reel by Kimiro, featuring a new design for a snake resting on a branch.

I was determined to fold some version of this design, but knew I did not have the paper (large enough) or the patience for a 128 grid (with partial 256ths) grid-based scaled-shaped model. So I scaled down – working out the minimum size scale I could reasonably shape consistently, then working out how much of a 70cm square duo sheet of Kraft would be the snake.

The design is ingenious – an 8-grid strip down the diagonal of a square becomes the snake, the rest of the paper becomes the colour-changed branch. One consequence of re-scaling the snake was that the paper allocated to the branch diminished to barely protruding from the snake’s body – so I thought “fuck it” and tucked it inside (like the layers of waste paper in a Ryujin) to give the body bulk, allowing me to fashion a lower jaw and forked tongue.

Another consequence of re-factoring the snek was that it’s overall length is diminished to almost comic proportions. This little guy is a grower, not a shower, indeed.

Accepting that the project was cursed from the beginning (by my lack of commitment 😛 ) I decided to just go for it, treating the fold as an exercise in precision. Pre-creasing took an age, then scale collapse went smoothly. I then pre-creased all the scale-shaping also took an age, not nearly as long as the actual scale-shaping however. My Ryu Jin 3.5 PTSD returned at times, causing me to walk away from the project a few times.

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Just a Guy Holding a Crane

| wonko

I was cleaning some cooked Paper Mulberry (Broussonetia papyrifera) bark, scraping the outer layers that was outer bark and the remnants of the dried up fleshy parts of the plant, and a thought occurred to me. The residue was really fibrous – what would paper even look like made from this waste?

Given I had the time, equipment and curiosity to fuck around and find out, I hand-beat the residue, rinsed the pulpy mess until it was clean, and then divided the ball into 3, figuring (via guestimation) that 1/3 of the blob was enough to make an A3 sheet.

I took 1/3, added it to a bucket of water and agitated it vigorously to breakup and disperse the fiber uniformly through the water. Then, using a rectangular chinese food container, I gently ladled the really watery pulp onto my new A3 Mold and Deckle, in the lid of my new vat. Taking the time to distribute the fibre evenly and thinly. When all the fiber was gone, I couched the resultant sheet onto glass, then added some smooth poly-cotton sheeting material as a layer to isolate the sheet, then added a flanellette layer, another poly-cotton sheet material layer and then repeated the sheet formation process another 2 times.

Topped off the “post” with another layer of flannelette, and a top sheet of glass. Putting this sandwich on an angle to encourage the drips onto the floor drain, I then added a besser block to add firm squishing pressure, and left it to drip overnight. I must engineer a paper press that is more consistent.

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WM02 – An Art Piece?

| wonko

Those following my socials will have seen that i was quite excited with an idea and it’s execution – a rare 1-2 whammy with me:

Having made Mulberry Washi, I was trying to decide what i wanted to do with it. I think the larger sheets are currently sheet pulp storage I will re-beat and incorporate into other sheets, but sheets 1 and 2 (names WM01 and WM02 – my nomenclature) I wanted to keep…because.

WM01 is barely there mulberry tissue – I will not fold it, but it is fascinatingly strong. WM02 on the other hand is almost a sheet of paper – thin, lovely deckle edges and loads of character.

I had this idea, based in part on my extensive folding from one of the oldest origami books there is – Senbaruzu Orikata. The idea of a traditional Tsuru (crane – the one everyone including me learns first) still connected by a wing-tip to the surrounding paper began to eat away at me (originally the idea woke me up).

Folding connected cranes is all about the prep, so as not to put too much strain on the part that joins – a single point of failure. Exploring the sheet, I searched my origami squares collection and found that an 11.7cm square could be placed, avoiding the holes and weirder bits, so decided on that size arbitrarily. I also liked how much of the sheet would be untouched, and reasoned I would need it to attach to a backboard if it were to be framed… but I am getting ahead of myself – I had no idea if I could fold or work the sheet at all.

In pencil, I traced the square as accurately as I could, then carefully with a scalpel liberated all 4 edges nearly to each corner so I could see the square border, then gingerly began laying in the pre-creases of a “bird base”. To my absolute delight the paper took sharp creases with NO fatigue. Knowing how the bird base was going to collapse it allowed me to place the necessary pre-creases ONCE, and in the right orientation (mountain or valley).

Once the pre-creasing was done, I then went and liberated 3 of the 4 corners (no turning back now) and collapsed and shaped the Tsuru with no real drama – just being careful of the single remaining attached corner.

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1164: Kimiro’s Ammonite

| wonko

With the development of origami design tools like Oriedta and Mu-Tsun Tsai’s astonishing “Box Pleating Studio”, origami design has in recent years gone through an explosion of complexity, innovation and artistry:

When I first saw Kimiro‘s new design for an Ammonite, I was astonished, then further amazed when he released the crease pattern – I knew I had to give it a try.

Ammonites are long extinct cephalopods (squiddy things) that lived in coiled shells – these shells are quite common fossils ranging from tiny (a few cm across) to massive (a couple of meters in diameter). Their closest living relative is the Nautilus I think. It is believed they, like the nautilus, could vary their buoyancy to control how deep they were in the ocean, and they probably had siphons that allowed them a little jet-propulsion.

Box pleating, by nature, results in blocky bases, the challenge is to make them feel rounded and organic. This model’s design has a good balance of fine detail and larger surface, and modelling and shaping it has taken me an age.

Initially I was sure the shell was fully closed 3D, but after posting some collapse and shaping progress photos on Origami Dan Discord, Kimiro himself popped into my DMs and showed me the back of his model – a half shell solved sooooo many problems. How amazing is it that in the age of the internet communication with the designer is actually possible. It continues to blow my mind how accessible origami legends are, and how helpful they are to noobs like me also.

I chose a lovely 45cm sheet of green/natural Damul matt Kraft paper (toying briefly with the idea of throwing shadow thai at it, but reasoned that I did not want a black shell or critter).

Laying in the grid was easy – finger pressure only (no bone-folded setting this time, as I wanted the creases to be as unobtrusive as possible), the CP is pretty simple, the shell spiral a lovely piece of geometry allowing a colour change.

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1162: Zen

| wonko

There are times when thoughts turn to the complexity of simplicity:

A few simple folds on an eccentric waterbomb base and you end up with a model that encourages deep contemplation, invoking a calm.

This is Pierre-Yves Gallard’s wonderful “Buddhist Monk”, folded simply (if not accurately) from a 15cm square of orange-white kami to simulate the otherwise vibrant saffron robes.

I am always delighted by how few folds it takes to evoke a human form – we seem innately able to recognise “people shaped” things, faces also.

A lovely exercise in restraint – this is my first fold, as I was discovering how to isolate the head and form the robes – I have no doubt subsequent attempts will be an improvement, but real life doesn’t give you a “re-do”, so here it is.

I posed it here with my Vietnamese soapstone dragon behind. The model is free-standing, it has a fold-back tab that makes it pretty stable. I like the the juxtaposition of the meditating monk playing against the hidden dragon in sharp focus, with the background blurring into obscurity.

I wonder if paper is folded in the forest and there is no one there to see it, does it remain as origami?

1160: Baby Penguin

| wonko

Browsing my collection of Tanteidan Magazines, as one does, I stumbled across a rather cute little baby penguin designed by Yoo Tae Yong that I had never tried:

I dug out a lovely sheet of Navy/White Yukogami from origami-shop, and began, carefully, laying in creases.

Yukogami is a deeply textured paper, making pre-creasing difficult as you cannot see your crease lines easily – for the finished model this is an absolute bonus, but during the actual folding this is a positive pain in the arse to be honest.

A relatively simple base leads to a careful collection of colour-change moves to isolate enough flaps to clearly define the face details, while surfacing enough white to do the body and isolate the flippers – all in all a genius design.

The final model is this plump, almost furry little penguin chick awaiting it’s next meal – fun fold.

1158: Wilhelmina the Wyvern

| wonko

Flipping through Makoto Yamaguchi’s “Origami Dragons Premium”, as one does, I stumbled across a lovely Wyvern, designed by Chuya Miyamoto:

Digging through my paper stash I found the perfect sheet for this model, a purple spotty Do paper that was part of a prize I won from Phạm Hoàng Tuấn’s Vietnamese origami paper shop pre-pandemic, so decided to give it a whirl.

My philosophy when approaching a super-complex origami design is based around “fuck around and find out” or more politely “fold until I finish or it fails”, and this model was a real treat.

A truly great design and fold sequence takes into account the material, not overly stressing it, managing accumulating layers and locking things together to keep things tidy. This design was so satisfying to fold, and in combination with the paper choice the resultant model is stunning.

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1157: Fairy Penwings

| wonko

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.

1156: OnePiece Den Den Mushi

| wonko

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.

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1154: Glossy Black Cockatoo

| wonko

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.

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Green Tree Frog

| wonko

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).

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Kangaroo

| wonko

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.

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Short-Beaked Echidna

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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.

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