fantasy

Showing Off

| wonko

Our school has large display cases. I have kilograms of origami at home, in showboxes, tidy tubs, cupboards, garbage bags and display cases … one thing led to another:

library display 2019

My aim with this display to to show the variety of forms modern Origami takes, from traditional, figurative, geometry and abstract. Additionally I have included 14 different dragons, a current fascination – can you find them all?

I feature some of my favourite pieces, designed by legends such as Satoshi Kamiya, Robert Lang, Eric Domaine, Francis Ow, Ronald Koh, Kade Chan, Eric Joisel, Brian Chan, Jason Ku and more.

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962: Ryu Jin 2.1 – Head

| wonko

In a bid to calm down and relax after a brutal week at work, I took a 60cm square of red/natural Ikea Kraft paper and started folding… and folded, and folded and folded.

Ryujui 1.2 head

I have been lured back into the fold (as it were) of Ryu Jin folders (nerds who attempt to fold Satoshi Kamiya’s devilishly difficult dragon series). Having already folded a 1.0, 1.2 and 3.5, I noticed that I had never attempted a 2.1.

Ryujui 1.2 head views and detail

For the uninitiated, the numbers indicate refinements, with the 1.0 being vaguely dragon like and the 3.5 (the culmination of this design process) being the most astonishingly detailed design imaginable.

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961: Drogon, The Black Dragon

| wonko

The lure of Satoshi Kamiya’s Dragon set is alluring. Recently I was invited into a community that celebrates the RyuJin series. Having folded a 1.0 and a 3.5, I thought it time to fold another:

Drogo, Satoshi Kamiya's RyuJin 1.2

This is the 1.2 – a refinement of the 1.0 and I had fun shaping the head as per a guide by Daniel Brown – a luscious and generously shared photodiagram set that I really enjoyed following.

My 1.2 is actually based on almost an identical crease pattern to the 1.0 I folded back in 2013, but back then I had NO IDEA how to shape it, and sort of made up shit as I went along.

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945: David Nudd’s Box-Pleat Sword

| wonko

As part of a weekly challenge on the Sydney Origami Inc facebook page, I had a go at David Nudd’s box-pleated sword:

david nudd's sword

A basic 16×16 grid has a few extra short diagonals layed in before a collapse that is fairly straight forward to give the basic morphology of the base.

david nudd's sword CP
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There be dragons, lots of them …

| wonko

I must confess to being in love with the process of folding, less with the final product. I have kept a small proportion of my folds, but there are some that I just cannot part with:

This collection of dragons makes me dizzy, and is a small selection of the dragons I have folded over the years. Hundreds of hours of folding are on display here – literally hundreds.

More importantly, nearly everything on the table is NOT to first fold – certainly they are the first “acceptable” fold I managed of each model – some were folded MANY times before something “acceptable” was reached.

The moral of this cautionary tale is two-fold: effort is it’s own reward and mistakes are opportunities to learn. If only the current generation understood these simple principles.

939: A Weyr of Red Dragons

| wonko

It has been a while since I last blogged a fold. Truth be told the end of the term beat me up a lot – coupled with a savage cold, auto-immune rash (I still have) and an infected tear duct, on top of the marking and reporting it beat me up proper:

That said, folding remains a refuge and I did fold a lot in the interim, just did not blog about it – must redress the balance.

I “found” a set of diagrams, well, stumbled across them on Pinterest (the largest bastion of copyright infringement) and decided it was worth a fold after seeing an unauthorised youtube video tutorial of the same fold (I must have skipped over it while scanning the document).

Paper sizes for body, wings and head
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934: Mikiller觅晨’s Modular Dragon

| wonko

Assignment time at school is fairly boring, for the most part, for a teacher. Students have lots to do, you need to be available to help on demand but there is a fair bit of sitting around waiting to be needed:

I had found a bunch of PDF’s explaining briefly how to fold parts of what I had assumed would eventually be a dragon. After trial folding the head and a foot I thought it was something I could do in stages. I (arbitrarily) decided my “standard square” would be the biggest cut from an A3 page. Most parts were then made using this standard.

Origami purists would probably have issues with this design, as there is an element of paper craft in some of the details, the head, for instance, is actually 1 standard square and 6 other bits of paper, folded and (shhh) glued in place. The body was made from 7 separate standard squares, 6 of which were the same, the tail segment was a little different to create the fan end.

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925: Crouching Dragon

| wonko

Origami dragons and wyverns seem to be a bit of a “holy grail”, with the more complex gaining almost mythic reputations for breaking folders spirits when they attempt them:

I came upon the diagrams for this charming model shared on fakebook, and it took a moment to hunt down the designer – Shaku on Flickr. Continue reading →

914: (364/365) Cartoon Rabbit

| wonko

Riccardo Foschi has a magic sense of design in his models, and this cartoon rabbit is a real charmer:

As an exercise in box pleating, this model takes a 12 x 24 square grid and, via a. Are fully designed collapse teases arms, legs, tummy and detailed head while providing enough paper to model those features in a fun way. Continue reading →

908: (358/365) ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas …

| wonko

…and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, except for a mouse:

Prep for festivities is always fun. Family feast tomorrow, lots to do. I hope you and your families enjoy the prep time as much as the day itself. Continue reading →

902: (352/365) Satan

| wonko

So apparently a symbol of the festive season is a portly old beardy man in a red suit that gives presents to kids who have been nice (and not naughty):

This is Steven Casey’s “Santa”, a lovely exercise in colour change and layer management. Continue reading →

898: (348/365) The Droid You Were Looking For

| wonko

Now I am as much a Star Trek fan as the next one, and love a comedy sidekick movie plot device. It was interesting that the Star Wars franchise returned to the tried and true “quirky beeping droid” sidekick in “Force Awakens” and the BB8 droid seems a cute successor to the more limited R2 units (that they decided could fly in later/earlier messes of movies):

This is Martin Hunt’s Modular BB8 droid model. A torturous fold of many parts.

4 different modules combine to make a roughly spherical ball with a “head” that can be affixed wherever you want, sort of captured the overall morphology of the droid. Continue reading →

897: (347/365) Deathstar

| wonko

Tomorrow in Oz the next chapter of the Star Wars saga opens in cinemas. I am not likely to see it until the crush of “real fans” abates but thought on the eve I would fold something relevant:

This I have labelled “Deathstar” because it bears an uncanny resemblance to the space station the Liberator encountered just out from Far Point, while captain Mal and his rag tag band of cylons, and their computer Aurac, cruised the belt looking for replicants (how many scifi franchises are hinted at here? :P). Continue reading →

Morning Light with Dragon Head

| wonko

Revisiting a fold I achieved 3 years ago, I was struck with the dramatic lighting caused by an accidental reflection on our wooden floor and resultant shadow:

You know when you see something amazing and cannot quite believe it was you who made it? I seem to be surrounded with such moments.

887: (337/365) Tree Topper

| wonko

Always looking for a nice Xmas tree topper, this little angel is designed by Leonardo Pulido Martinez and was presented in one of my BOS journals:

Had accuracy (and my Spanish) been better, I would also have hands (fingers) on this little model but I started with an almost square and crease drift occurred towards the end. Continue reading →