Exploring the wealth of designs Akira Yoshizawa left us with, I sumbled across this delightful snail:
Simple yet the very essence of the critter – much modelling potential also, as the shell could be coiled, the foot textured etc.
Sometimes simple is necessary – busy day, lots of other folding going on, you get that.
Now yes, I will be the first to admit this is NUTS!:
But you only know half of it – this is my SECOND centipede folded today – you see I learned a general principle: how to tease legs out of a straight edge, and I got … a little … carried away. I should have been taken away for doing this twice in one day – 2 HOURS each creepy crawley, and some sore hands to finish with but it was so totally worth it – hahahaha.
This model is based on Peter Engel’s Centipede, although I found many of the steps incomprehensible so sort of “improvised” and I think it is rather special – ONE piece of paper, 32 (yes, that is right THIRTY TWO!!!) legs, a rather splendid mandible and antennae and some of them stickey-outey-tail-things they have.
Folding on this scale is crazy (thank goodness for fingernails) – the problem is finding a piece of paper LARGE enough to make this model not torture (both times I failed, cutting the largest 4×1 I could out of an A3 sheet). At this scale the feet are very difficult to fold with fat clumsy fingers, and it was a days work just to stop the paper tearing. Just for the record, NEITHER centipede suffered paper fatigue, splits or tears – that in itself is a miracle.
The technique is extensible, and, given longer pieces of paper I can make more legs – very nifty trick that I will remember as any straight edge now is a candidate for a row of stickey outey things.
Eric Joisel was a treasure in the paper folding community – this is a butterfly designed by Michael LaFosse in memory of him:
A simple fold with much potential for modelling, the body ends up being thick and the wings delicate
Happy with this as a first fold, hope you like it.
Now I have not folded a model from Fumiaki Kawahata before because they looked so difficult:
The instructions I have come from her lovely book “Insects Volume 1” and are all in Japanese (problem number 1) and use a completely different set of sumbols to indivate things like repeat, turn over, sink, spontaneously combust etc which are also in Japanese.
I ended up just going on the before and after diagrams to make sense of what was happening when – not a very efficient technique on a 120 step model with dozens of “repeat behind” that I had to guess but, you know, that is part of the adventure -right?
This is a lovely model on all counts – the body is plump and 3d, the wings delicate 9single layer) with wing cover, feet including lovely sproingy back legs all int eh right place, lovely little antennae. plump and pleated abdomen – wow!
Originally I was going to use 18cm tissue foil and I am soooo glad I chose larger as the fiddly detail near the end would not have been possible with my fat clumsy fingers in a smaller format. I could not imagine trying to tackle this with normal paper as some of the sections are 12 layers thick and were difficult maneuvers even with tissue foil.
I will fold more from this book – the techniques are amazing and the models so lifelike – surely a rival to Robert Lang in terms of realism and complexity of model.
You may applaud now, I do deserve it for managing to get to the end with only a little bit of swearing.
My second favorite sci-fi film of all time (Alien) brought new forms of terror to the screen:
In a well tried formula, a nasty makes itself on board a spaceship firmly clamped to the face of an inquisitive explorer (John Hurt), implanting an egg in the host’s tummy before scaring everyone and dropping dead. The newly hatched nasty then systematically, and with great suspense, eats everyone – you get that. This prototype xenomorph is all the more terifying because, based on Geiger illustrations, organically modelled after a sinister hand.
I like that there was always a life-cycle implicit in the Alien films, and that there was an innate social order amongst the xenmporphs also.
This model was a little trickey to fold – I had to nurse the copy paper as at many junctures it looked like it would disintegrate – I managed the fold without any paper fatigue I am proud to say and it is a worthy proto alien to compliment the adult I folded earlier in the year
Insectoid, reptilian, with gripsey fingers for walking, prehensile tail to wrap around the neck of the victim, off lung sacks for gas exchange, a well thought out model indeed (even if the instruction annotations were bewildering – thankfully I am confident enough to improvise when I cannot make head nor tail of what is supposed to go where)..
Now I found a collection of spirals and boxes by paper legend Tomoko Fuse, and the snail looked hoopy, so I decided to fold it:
A relatively simple fold, with an elegant curved pleat forms the shell and a simple shape for the foot topped off with lovely eye stalks.
If I was to fold this again I would use less symmetrical pleats, so the creases get closer together as the shell gets smaller, still it is a lovely bit of geometry.
Was puzzling what to do as today’s fold, glad I chose this.
This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of a technology that changed my life – The World Wide Web:
Tim Berners Lee posted the first web page ever and the model of online information sharing was changed forever. I thought a SPIDER was appropriate to mark the occasion and an Australian one to boot – given a large network of networks in Oz joined the world wide network of networks to form what we now know as the INTERNET (I am old enough to remember when there was no net).
This was a torturous fold – fiddly beyond measure and I am so glad I started with a large format sheet of tissue foil instead of even attempting it with copy paper – the legs are like 12 thicknesses, thinned down (proving that Mythbusters were wrong). Beautifully thin legs, plump inflated body and ferocious looking fangs – it is really creepy.
The instructions were almost completely diagrammatic, with only occasional random spanish annotations so I had to improvise, or look forward/backwards to work out what was happening in a bunch of places.
There is something vaguely creepy about putting a spiders head in your mouth the blow up the abdomen, even though I knew it was paper it just felt creepy. The instructions were deceptively complex – I have grown to hate the “repeat” symbol which hides hours of work. I am really quite chuffed however with the result and think it looks suitably like a redback spider (we have them on the northern side of our house), the typical front bundle of legs behind a large abdomen are quite distinctive. It is a variation of the “Black Widow” designed by Manuel Sirgo
Wow, 200 days down so I thought I would try something special:
Kade Chan is a design master, and this beetle is something I will fold again (only not with copy paper) – this lovely beetle is complete with lovely carapace and modeled mandibles, all in very few folds.
Simplicity and economy results in a rounded body and legs that are i the right position – I got a little paper fatigue along the top central axis, but that is copy paper’s fault, not the design I feel as the thickness of 80gsm paper makes the body very thick and quite difficult to work with.
200 down, that is …only … 165 to go – bugger, just when I was feeling on top of this thing, nvm , happy with this as my first fold of this model.
I have seen many models of various complicated insects, and intend to try many – my first foray is not an insect at all, but a scorpion:
This is a well designed model with 8 legs, a pair of lovely claws and a crab-like carapace underneath
The tail, IWHO, is a major oversight – it ends up so thick and fatigued that it was very difficult to model and you can see (if you look close) paper fatigue took it’s toll along the back primary crease and part way up the tail. Copy paper is not up to this job but I found out waaay to late in the fold to even consider re-starting it with different paper.
Some interesting and precise folds beforehand mean a collapse and a bunch of reverse folds easily make the legs and claws, quite impressed – could see also how this technique could be used to make a squid as well, will keep that in my toolbox of folds to consider.
When I first saw this model I knew it was going to be a tough one – so much paper compressed into such a compact model:
I searched for some large format copy paper and an architect friend gave me some A1 80gsm, from which I cut an 80cm square (well, as I discovered when I was folding, it was not quite square, but I soldiered on)
The SCALE of this model is terrifying, the finished model is bigger than my hand and horrifically spider-like, even as a white first-fold. I am itching to fold this again, with some thinner, more robust paper.
I would like to say this was a quick model, in truth it ate nearly 4 hours (but I did manage to make some rather spectacular pumpkin soup during the many tea and chore breaks). Some of the steps are astonishingly tricky, and I could not imagine achieving them easily on a smaller bit of paper – the body and leg thicknesses were very tough and I am afraid the paper suffered paper fatigue on many primary creases.
I am seriously chuffed I managed to achieve something so spider-like, there were many junctures where I thought of giving up and folding something simpler (and denying all knowlege of the crumpled mess in the bin) but patience, perseverance and earl grey tea took the photocopy paper places it should not have been able to go.
You too can have a go at this here … wish I had seen this video before finishing the thing.
I love this pose-able model, and accept your discrete applause for being able to fold it. I am sorry Mr Lang, I will attempt to make the bits neater the next time I fold it – you are a design genius however.
This model seems like it wants to get up and go places, so I have begun creeping out the family by making it do so (Blu Tac is a lovely thing)
I loved Ridley Scott’s “Alien” – so dark, terrifying and it introduced a much reprised xenomorph originally designed by H.R. Geiger.
When I first saw the instructions for a paper xenomorph (in Spanish) I filed them away in the “yeah, prolly not” folder.
Conventionally the diagram should have symbols to reinforce what is happening (sometimes with words also, except these were in Spanish). First exception to the rule was a TURN OVER with no corresponding flip symbol!!! Grrrr. Following my realisation that I was folding the wrong side, I tried again only to be baffled by “Quedan la dos solapas mirando hacia la derecha” describing a collapse, followed by “Introducir las solapas dentro de los bolsillos” to describe a pocket tuck … poor paper (and finger tips) by this stage. Thank you Google translate.
Now I admit I broke a rule here – I got part way towards collapsing the base and realised I missed an instruction to open some side flaps so did all the nasty folding over the top of some snarly pre-folding instead of on the yet-unfolded side. I discovered this when i opened up the model expecting to find pre-creases only to find none – oops. I was determined to complete this model, so I started again – so sue me.
This is AMAZING – appendages, tail (ouch, that was painful to fold at this scale) and I re-worked the head to be a little 3d and characteristically domed – very pleased with this model. For an A3-cut square to reduce to a model barely 7cm tall, there is a LOT of paper torture, thank goodness for fingernails – I am amazed the copy paper did not simply disintegrate (it would have had I used the model I folded in error first).
For all you Alien fans out there, this one is for you (in commemoration of the theft of a classic line in the movie “Paul” I saw last night – “get away from her you bitch!” – lol.
Now when I first saw this I thought there was no way I would be able to do it – such intricate pleating, not possible on A4 photocopy paper:
So I cheated, and cut a 40x40cm square of white wrapping paper and gave it a whirl. there is much to like about this model – the gecko’s placement above the fly, the tail, some of the feet.
This model took me ages – on and off much of the day. The result is lovely – considering getting it framed as it’s rectilinear format might suit a shadow box frame, Some distance may provide perspective. The fold was torturous, such pleating, unfolding and twisting in other directions, many times I thought the paper would disintegrate.
Fairly happy with the first fold – will not be repeating it. Diagrams only, not clearly drawn, some baffling maneuvers and even at this scale (the largest paper folded to date) some of the folds were microscopic.
You may, however, applaud discretely. I need a cup of tea!
Now when I was a kid, ferreting around in the underbrush, we used to call these little chaps “Slaters”, as a Biology teacher, I referred to them as “Wood Lice”:
These isopods were made famous by “A Bugs Life” – remember the foreign tumbling critters Tuck and Roll? They are a sort of primitive crustacean and have a myriad of legs, body segments, are rarely bigger than 1cm in length and are usually grey or light brown (depending on how much light they have been exposed to.
Mistakenly I decided to try a “simpler” model than my chosen Joisel model which stated it needed much bigger paper to make it even possible – I cursorily scanned a Lang design and settled on this – it looked simple enough – boy was that a mistake.
This has taken me AGES, and so often I thought it was going to hell in a handbasket. So much paper torture to get to the stage when it said to do 8 3-way accordion crimps (like Hoodie) and I was ready to give up. Instead, I made a cup of tea and persisted.
It has 14 individual legs, a pair of antennae, 10 body segments and I think it is just plain awesome that it worked, first fold.
You may applaud now.
It amazes me that this pattern was generated MATHEMATICALLY first – Mr Lang, you are a genius – everything in its place based on some seriously wonky geometry constructed by exhausting pre-creasing. Very happy the paper survived and it looks like it should.
This model elevates me to Paper Ninja status (and reminds me to consider MORE carefully before launching into a model).
Although the wing-span of this model is quite large, for an A4 square-based model, the formation of the body using this paper was torturous at best.
I am very happy, as a first-fold, to get something even vaguely butterfly shaped from this complex design. Having folded it once, I think I could do it much better now I know what goes where.
Robert lang is a master, even though I think this butterfly looks more like a moth (particularly the body placement), it has 2 spikey antennae and a meaty body that seem quite natural.
I sat for 1/4 hour just trying to collapse the base, the valley and mountain folds seemed not to make sense until, when ready to hand in the towel and admit defeat it just sort of… worked. Photocopy paper is lousy as a medium for these types of models, it is just too coarse and there were many moments when bending the model that I fully expected the paper to give. Anyway, 78 down, only 287 to go….
Now I first found a partially incomplete PDF of this model and thought that it, for the most part made sense:
Little did I realise that the important parts (head, legs, abdomen) were not actually explained so I … improvised. It is an ingenious re-working of the frog base – the same one that I taught my tutor group, with some twisting and tweaking to make extra limbs – nice to remember when next I feel inventive.
Mightily pleased with the result but it is some serious paper torture – A4 page twisted, crimped and bent down to make a model that is barely 5cm long – my reference pad (underneath) is sideways to display the model.
I like it – realistic enough to make my daughter jump (she is afraid of them) so that says something at least.
