fantasy

442: Ryujin 1.0

| wonko

Satoshi Kamiya’s Ryujin series is legendary in the Origami Community. Starting at the relatively simple 1.0 (folded here),  the next iteration is 1.2, then a new morphology 2.1 culminating in the insane 3.5:

Whilst I am not sure I have the time nor skill to even attempt 2.1 (let alone 3.5), my attempt at 1 is chronicled here.

After finding much discussion about it on the HK Origami Forum, and only being able to find a blurry (published by Satoshi himself deliberately blurry) I reasoned “how hard could this be?” Continue reading →

435: Satoshi’s Phoenix 3.5

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There are a number of models in the origami world I see as “legendary” – the Phoenix (version 3.5) is one of those:

When I bought Satoshi Kamiya’s works book volume 2 I knew I would one day put myself up against this challenge, I also knew it would take me a while to master it.

Continue reading →

423: A Diskworld

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Sir Terry Pratchett, one of my favourite authors, imagined a world like no other, a “disk” world, held aloft on the back of 4 gigantic elephants, standing on the back of a giant star turtle called “Great A’ Tuin”:

The breadth of imagination, depth of character, intricacy of story arc and obvious love he lavishes on his books are an amazing legacy. Everyone who is a fan starts somewhere – for me, it was the book “Mort” but there are dozens, each clever, funny and beautifully written.

When presented with such a lovely TURTLE it seemed only natural to attepmt to pay homage to a literary favourite of mine, so set about assembling the component bits. It was as if the stars had aligned, having just folded ELEPHANTS I set about making 4 of them, only to realise they were too big and so made 4 smaller ones.

The disk was paper craft – a circle of cardboard, MAP of Diskworld on top, covered with paper, toilet roll holder cut to be support and bracket that elephants could rest on and a balance for the pitched back of the turtle – voila.

I am quite chuffed with the end result – partly because it matches the image I had in my head, partly because it works as a whole, and is able to be dismantled to boggle and the component parts as well.

I posted photos on terry Pratchett’s Facebook page, I hope he sees them – I hope the model brings his even a small amount of the joy his writings have brought me.

416: Dark Rider

| wonko

“Round the corner came a black horse, no hobbit-pony but a full-sized horse; and on it sat a large man, who seemed to crouch in the saddle, wrapped in a great black cloak and hood, so that only his boots in the high stirrups showed below; his face was shadowed and invisible.
“When it reached the tree and was level with Frodo the horse stopped. The riding figure sat quite still with its head bowed, as if listening. From inside the hood came a noise as of someone sniffing to catch an elusive scent; the head turned from side to side of the road.” – “Three is Company,” Fellowship of the Ring, p. 84

I hate it when things beat me – I find it really hard to let it go:

On my FOURTH attempt, I managed to fold Jason Ku’s amazing model of a Dark Rider (version 8.1) – another character/thing from Lord of the Rings. This is getting to be a habit but is part of the build up to the release of the first part of “The Hobbit”, and I am a bit of a fan.

This fold took me an age (about 6 hours of actual folding) – determined to be accurate, take my time and complete each step as neatly as I could, this strategy paid off through stonkingly complicated twists, crimps and spread-squashes as you coax a square of paper into a possessed horse with a robed rider.

I am particularly proud of the hands/gauntlets – my variation on Jason Ku’s design, I think it looks better. there is so much to see in this model that it is difficult to photograph it and do it justice.

A huge piece of Kraft paper (60cm square) results in a decent sized model (14cm at its tallest) with amazing detail. My only criticism I guess is the flimsiness of the front legs – completely unable to support the bulk of paper above.

I mounted this model on a simple wire armature, so it can stand – he sinisterly looks like he is reaching for something (the one ring, naturally) and I like that the robes look full but are empty.

I masterpiece in design, there were many times I just had to walk away, unable to fathom what the next step meant or how I was going to achieve it. Kraft paper is remarkably forgiving and there was nearly no paper fatigue near the end. Not sure how you could actually fold this model with thicker paper as the centre gets very dense and shaping requires you to wrangle upwards of 20 layers.

I am totally chuffed to have achieved this, my first successful fold after so many failures – one I even had the paper disintegrate in my hands due to fatigue. I found myself having to look forward to how the manoeuvre looks when done to work out some of the ore complex swivels, reverses and open sinks.

As awesome as this model is, this design is NOT a beginners model – the instructions need interpretation as many steps require many new folds to happen at the same time (some without reference).  Indeed I look at my first successful attempt and notice a bunch of things I will do differently next time I fold it.

No idea what I will do with this model, but I am pleased I can now mentally tick this one off in my folders bucket list.

415: Smaug the Golden

| wonko

I have been looking for a nice dragon, you know, in celebration of the forthcoming release of “The Hobbit” (being a bit of a fan):

I saw a coloured/cut version of this dragon on Deviantart and thought it worth trying, turns out it is a WIP from Tadashi Mori, who released a video of how to fold it so I was away.

It reminds me a little of the “Ancient Dragon” by Satoshi Kamiya, but is much easier to fold and is a lot less brutal to the paper.

I can see huge modelling potential for this dragon, Tadashi calls it a “darkness Dragon” and I hope he is continuing the development of the model. I added knees, claws and modified the wings slightly so they stay out in display.

I like the tail and general morphology of this dragon – the central body length (betwixt fore and aft legs is a little compact, neck a little long and hind legs a little bunched but it is a nice fold none the less.

I am very happy with this as a first fold, and will probably fold it again. I used 55cm square Kraft paper and it seemed to hold up pretty well.

Soooo … who would like this little beauty? He needs a home, is only a little bit bitey but 100% dragon (well, 74% dragon, 26% paper, but with imagination…)

edit: smaug long since found a home, sorry

413: Satoshi’s Minotaur

| wonko

Determined to try something harder, I had flagged satoshi Kamiya’s Minotaur a “must try eventually”:

I also wanted to try my new “envelopener” – an ingenius paper cutter from The Origami Shop that splits a page on a crease – being frustrated at not being able to cut a straight edge easily on large format paper.

This lovely mythical beast is part man part bull but Satoshi takes this to a new level, making the man beastly as well.

So much paper is worked here, starting with nearly a metre square, the resultant model is barely 15cm tall and so dense in places that detailing was very difficult. I love the expression of his face, the arms and hands, hooves and fantastic tail.

Such innovative use of the sheet, you do not realise that the arms end up being about 30+ layers thick. I have seen this model folded by others and it was standing – mine, made from 35GSM brown Kraft paper does not (without the assistance of a wider armature stand I made for him)

As a first fold, I am very pleased with how he turned out – I might fold him again, one day, as I learned a lot from this fold.

408: Buckbeak the Hippogriff

| wonko

I will say it, I am an out and proud Harry Potter fan. Amongst the fantastical beasts that exist in the potterverse is a Hippogriff:

Manuel Sirgo is a talented designer and this is a masterful use of (an albeit fraking huge bit) paper.

I am so glad I started large (45cmsquare brown kraft) as some of the wrangling to make the head and feet was pretty intense.

This odd critter is part “griffin” part horse – claws at the front, hooves at the rear, wings and a bird-like head – weirdly wonderful.

I like that the paper is so dense it ends up being free-standing, the wings spread majestically and I am pretty happy with my first fold of it. More importantly, I learned a new trick to spread/stretch and twist stickey-outey bits to get more paper for a hood/hand which will be handy for making other models more details I suspect.

406: Zombie Uprising

| wonko

Trapped in a particularly uninteresting supervision (I am a teacher, sometimes we have to supervise other teacher’s classes), I began bending paper unsure what I was going to make.

First I fashioned a hand, devising some lovely slender (skeletal almost) hands and looked at the paper I had left and then it came ot me – zombie hand emerging from a grave.

After much experimentation on the tombstone mostly, abandoning a full cross (yes, I did successfully box pleat one but in the end it seemed unnecessarily fiddly for the concept) I settled on a simple headstone.

This is the second time, whilst doodling, a new model has emerged (the other being superdude) and I am quite chuffed with it.

If you KNOW what you are looking at, it is obvious: basic scenario of undead digging themselves out out the grave; but honestly I had some hilarious guesses from passers by who noticed I was folding and wondered what it was.

I have included the dev sequence in 2 parts (partly because I wanted to document it clearly enough so someone else could have a go at it and partly because I wanted to remember how I did it – the box-pleat on the tombstone is neat, but I have not yet come up with a scheme to eradicate the seam down it’s face.

This is a little early for Halloween, but would love someone else to have a go at folding this to see if the photsequence is stand-alone or needs extra annotation.

Any takers?

400: Attack Of The Kraken

| wonko

There are many of what i would term “legendary” folds in the origami community – few more daunting that Brian Chan’s sculptural masterpiece “Attack Of The Kraken”:

I first saw pictures of this model when trolling around the internet looking for paper challenges: one piece of paper, you bend both a masted ship and a sea monster ripping it asunder – impossible surely. Amidst the turmoil there exists tiny details also – one tentacle contains a shard of ship rigging, another grasps the terrified yet defiant Captain – look closer, is that Captain Jack?

Annoyingly there seem to be no instructions on how to fold this thing – there was, however, a crease pattern adapted from a schematic Brian Chan tantalisingly left beside a display copy of his model so I started working on that. I photo-enlarged sections of the crease pattern and repeatedly folded them until I had discovered what to fold, in what order to make that section of the model work Continue reading →

399: Golden Snitch

| wonko

Exploring an Origami Tanteidan Convention book I came upon a model designed by Peter Farina I just had to try:

Being an out and proud Harry Potter fan, I know that the golden snitch is an essential component of any game of Quidditch, this one is a beauty.

Essentially using overlaying fan-pleats, you create the wings and enough paper to tease and shape round to make the body. Initially, my test fold was done in white paper and I found I had to be very careful (copy paper is so brittle) not to tear/split it – the middle section gets really damaged. Continue reading →