686: (136/365) Max Hulme’s Chess Pawn

The next few posts will follow a theme, playing with the idea of a classic game, this is the infantry – the cannon fodder, there are lots of these to throw at the enemy:

Max Hulme has designed all of the pieces for a paper chess game, seems wrong to split them up. Folded from a 12×3 proportioned rectangle, a little grimacing face under  helmet emerges, then arms, finally the body. Continue reading

685: (135/365) Bug

Old-school origami can still be fun, and this model is no exception:

Eduardo Clemente’s book “Papiroflexia” contains a plethora of old-style 60’s origami, before the boxpleating, tree-maker days. Continue reading

684: (134/365) Wise Owl

Cruising Fakebook, as you do, it is often that you stumble across interesting folds (well, in my circle of friends it is):

This is “Owl” by Angel Jacobo Figueroa Arriola. I spotted it as a photodiagram sequence in one of his galleries. Continue reading

683: (133/365) Pet Gripe

Last weekend I mowed the lawn – that is not so much a revelation as a statement of fact – I enjoy mowing, always have. I do not, however, enjoy the “presents” that dog owners allow their pets to leave on my lawn:

I recognise that part of the pleasure of owning a dog is that you have to take it for walks to empty it. It does however infuriate me when owners do not clean up after their newly emptied pet. Continue reading

682: (132/365) Sy Chen’s Hangman

Struggling to make it through Friday, I stumbled across Sy Chen’s Hangman:

This paper puzzle allows you to gradually reveal parts of a hangman, suitable for a table top game. Continue reading

681: (131/365) Tim Rickman’s Xenomorph

I am so excited that there is a new Alien Movie out today – Alien Covenant. Although I would dearly love to see it right now, I will have to wait until I am less busy and tired:

Having already folded both Kade Chan‘s Xenomorph, Fernando Gilgado‘s Alien and Face-Hugger I was struggling to find something Geiger-related.

I was browsing google imaged and came across Tim Rickman’s “comic” alien and knew I needed to try it. Continue reading

680: (130/365) Kade Chan’s Butterfly

Continuing my exploration of the butterfly form, I was browsing Kade Chan’s amazing website and came across his design for a butterfly:

A relatively simple fold that is really economic in its use of paper.  Continue reading

679: (129/365) Scorpion

Cruising through my copy of “Origamania” by Lionel Albertino, I came across a little creepy crawley I had not folded:

This scorpion is pretty clever – remarkably (by other scorpion standards) simple really for the effect, it efficiently creates the legs and leaves a nice body that can be made into a tail. Continue reading

678: (128/365) Paper Ninja

The internet is an amazing thing, no sooner had I folded a model by Oriole Esteve, then he contacted me via Fakebook and offered me diagrams for a bunch of other folds:

This is his Paper Ninja – a cunning little fellow that seems fairly stealthy. Continue reading

677: (127/365) Hung Coung Nguyen’s Butterfly

Continuing my exploration of origami butterfly form, I realised there were a bunch of folds from the book VOG2 that I had not attempted yet:

I tortured a thin bit of hand-made washi for 2 hours, turning it inside out, backwards and every which way but the resultant form is lovely indeed. Continue reading

675: (125/365) Centipede

Gagging for complex folds I thought I would torture a bit of paper with a super complex model from Robert Lang’s “Origami Insects II”:

The paper survived and the resultant creepy crawley is interesting if not perfect.

Missing steps and powering on, only have to backtrack, characterised this mammoth 6 hour fold. Some steps are small but have long term consequences and I was worried that unfolding and refolding would cause the paper to disintegrate, fortunately not. Continue reading

673: (123/365) Longhorn Beetle

Itching to dive into some thing complex (365 challenges are lousy for this, the one fold a day schedule makes longer hauls really difficult), I decided on an insect from Robert Lang that I had not folded before:

Folded nearly life-size, this is a longhorn beetle, a lovely little bug with seemingly ridiculous antennae. Continue reading

672: (122/365) Lang’s Butterfly

Continuing on the theme of butterflies, I could not go past this one, designed by Robert Lang:

Taken from “Origami Insects II”, it is one of a number of creepy crawlys that I have yet to fold from this book. Continue reading

670: (120/365) Dear World Leaders

Dear Donald, Kim, Vladimir and others,

I am writing to your parents regarding the bully tactics and macho posturing you seem to be engaging in while playing in the sandpit. This unacceptable behaviour has to STOP before someone gets hurt.

It seems to me that the sand pit is large enough for you and all the other children, but you seem to want to claim bits of it for yourself. The petty bickering and labelling bits of play equipment “mine” is tiring, but the threats to lob projectiles at each other has wider safety implications I can no longer overlook.

We have tried timeout, handshaking seems not sincere and meetings seem a waste of time as you seen intent on name-calling so, in a last ditch effort, I am appealing to your common sense. Failing that I will roll up a newspaper and give you all a good thwap.

Should the spit hit the fan, and some dumb f*ck lobs the first projectile, I would guess that you will all join in the shit fight. For the couple of minutes you congratulate yourselves on this retaliation (I mean he started it, right?) you will finally have a chance to consider what you have done. You will be making it impossible for anyone to play there again. Ever.

Enough is enough.

Sincerely, PDub

I am avoiding the news at the moment, with world leaders posturing at each other, a bunch of lunatics in charge of launch codes on all sides, it seems to me that we are sliding towards making the world a perfect place for this little guy:

This is Robert Lang’s Cockroach, a faithful paper recreation of my most hated insect. Continue reading

669: (119/365) Lillian’s Butterfly

Dedicated to Lillian Oppenheimer, a luminary in the early ’70s Origami world, this butterfly, designed by Michael LaFosse is pretty neat:

Interestingly, not poles apart in technique from “Alexander’s Swallowtail“, I chose different colours and was careful with the wing formation so it was morphologically distinct. Continue reading