Fun Fact – the collective noun for goldfish is either “Glint” or “Troubling” – now you know:
Now to choose which of these will make it to the actual goldfish bowl – suggestions….? Continue reading
fish
512: Koh’s Blackmoor Goldfish
Interestingly (for me), I have had goldfish over the years. At one stage I had a tank with 3 of these in it – Blackmoors – lovely plump little goggle-eyed black goldfish:
I remember as they got sicker, they became less black until, as they floated upside down ready to be scooped and flushed to an early grave they were almost a deep purple colour. Continue reading
511: Koh’s Tancho Oranda Goldfish
A completely different folding technique was a nice change with this much tortured bit of paper:
An odd-shaped goldfish, famously all white except for a colourful growth on the head, this thin-waisted fantail was actually really hard work even at this scale. Continue reading
510: Koh’s Ranchu Goldfish
…continuing on the “fishy” journey, the final in this technique’s series of plump full-bodied goldfish, Ronald Koh’s Ranchu:
Oddly, this mutant is known for the cancer-like orange growth on it’s head, the model approximates this. Continue reading
509: Koh’s Oranda Goldfish
…continuing the fishy theme, this is Ronald Koh’s Oranda Goldfish:
A lovely plump little fellow, I am sure I have had these at one time or another – round body, abundance of thin fins and round head. Continue reading
508: Koh’s Wakin Goldfish
Continuing the fishy theme, this “goldfish” looks more like a salmon:
The base, similar to the previous two manages to devote more to body, less to fins so that it looks like you would get a decent fillet of this little fishy. Continue reading
507: Koh’s Veiltail Goldfish
Continuing on the “something fishy” theme, I thought i would have a go at the Veiltail:
This goldfish mutant is nuts – bred for the profundity of tail, the body is stunted and a small muscular tail necessary to drove the massive drapery of tail fins. Continue reading
506: Koh’s Ryukin Goldfish
I have been searching for something “fishy” to make with some lovely paper gifted by a friend when Ronald Koh came to the rescue with some amazing mutant goldfish designs:
This is a Ryukin, and has a lovely 3d body, staring eyes and beautiful flowing fantail. Characterised by a hunched back, chunky body and pot belly, they swim slowly and provide decorative elements to any aquarium. Continue reading
Something Fishy
I was approached about the possibility of making some props for this year’s Middle School Musical, naturally I turned to Origami for Inspiration:
Project 1: a school of tropical fish. I remembered a lovely catfish/Koi designed by Davor Vinko. Continue reading
479: Dollar Koi
There is a branch of Origami that I have not explored because I live in Australia and our bank notes are no longer paper, they are plastic:
Moneygami, an exacting discipline that uses USD paper notes, a particular format where all notes are the same size and still made of paper is fascinating for a bunch of reasons.
The accuracy needed to tease so much detail out of such a small rectangle of tough paper is an art, and Won park is an astonishingly talented designer that designed this fish – a lovely catfish/Koi Carp.
Mind buggering (and finger bleeding) details include a luscious fantail, scales, gills, fins, a majestic head with EYES that are part of the “greenback” printed design – wow!. Continue reading
473: Scaled Goldfish
I am currently learning how to fold Satoshi Kamiya’s Ryu Jin 3.5. As part of that fold, “waterbomb tesselation” scales are made and shaped. I need practice so I am looking for scaley applications of this technique.
I remember ages ago folding Davor Vinko’s catfish and seeing a video by Jo Nakashima on how to incorporate scales into the body, so I adapted Jo’s technique so I could ‘pop’ scales running in the correct direction. Continue reading
470: Osteichthyes
Osteichthyes or BONY fish appear from fossil evidence as far back as 420 million years ago when they appear to have differentiated from cartilaginous fishy things. Fossil records are sketchy but shapes and morphologies are visible in traces in very ancient rocks.
This odd origami attempts to hint at the faint fossil traces left in a rock of a conventional bony fish and it does a pretty good job for such a simple fold. Continue reading
395: Showing Off
Our local council library has a large glass display case that usually has things on show for a month. I cautiously asked one of the librarians if she thought some origami would interest patrons and she was very enthusiastic:
There are around 200 models now on show at Holland Park Library for June and I am quite chuffed about that.
Dragging 3 large tidy-tubs of models, most of which I had left over from the 365 Origami Auction, they fill the case rather completely.
You can see models designed by me amongst designs by such luminaries as Kade Chan, Robert Lang, Eric Joisel and many others.
In addition, I was asked to run a workshop in the first week of my school holidays for interested folders (10 years old and up) – see the Holland Park Library website for details and bookings if you are interested.
The only question that begs answer is what the floop I do with these lovelies AFTER the month on show? Suggestions welcome … dear reader?
373: Mermaid
When I first saw this pattern, I thought “oh no, more cobra pleating” and relegated it to the “not before counselling” pile:
At the moment the weather is wet, hot and the humidty is such that you could cut it with a knife and I got to thinking who would be at home in this sort of weather – the answer was obvious, a mermaid.
I have some offcuts of lithography paper, they just so happen to be as near as anything to 2×1, so this model works well on them – mind you, at this scale, the tail pleating is close to as fine as I can actually do with that paper – folding 24ths down to 4mm is not fun and the paper did not like it, humidity not helping at all.
In the end, we have a lovely figurative mermaid – slightly fishy, lovely flowing hair, hand modestly covering ample bosom and calm face. Her posture suggested reclining – I believe they “moon-bake”, not sure where I got that from but anyway I made a rock for her to luxuriate on and it sort of works.
I learned a lot folding this for the first time, and will probably fold it again, I think I can improve the upper body a little – we shall see. Happy with the result none the less. You would get a decent fillet off her I would guess – the other other other white meat?
The instructions (well, actually a fairly rough folding guide actually) were in French, with odd proprietary annotations but it was fairly obvious what was going where from the outset – ingenious and not dissimilar to something I was working on myself but abandoned because it got busy last year.
post-script: In talking to Eric Vigier on Facebook, he had this to say:
Yes it’s mine , and you’re right in your comment : “odd proprietary annotations” but for my defence it’s my first diag , made at hands in 2002, i’m always happy to see that I drew it for something , so thank you ! For the story, I met Eric Joisel in 2002, we became friends and met regulary at his home at this time and when he saw my mermaid he said me that he would like to do one since a certain time , so I gave him my diag and the result is the magnificent mermaid you try actually , that is the sharing way i like to see in the Origami world !”
How wonderful is this Internet-encircled world I ask you?
349: Orca
Now I have gradually come to realise that captive cetaceans must lead a miserable life – dolphins particularly given tehy “see” with sonar, but the Orca is also something that does not belong in captivity:
This is Satoshi Kamiya’s Orca, well my go at it – for the most part it worked but there are some untidy parts that , in retrospect, I cannot work out if they were my fault or the fault of the diagrams.
With duo paper, this model is the standard black with white parts (or is that white with black parts) – was tempted to make the dorsal droop (in honour of “Willy” the orca who never actually managed to get free.
Inching towards the end of this project, need to be strategic with the models I choose, you get that sometimes.