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:
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.
Playing with a CP designed by Flynn Jackson, this little cappy chappy is a fun fold:
It reminds me of those people, who wear their red MAGA caps waaaaay too tight (and hence restrict blood flow to their brains?), and this little guy is also wearing sunnies.
There is a story of a deeply depressed man who, when seeking help from a psychiatrist, was given the advice that he should cheer himself up by seeing the visiting clown, the great “Joseph Grimaldi”. With the suggestion, the man wept more intensely. “I am Grimaldi”, he said.
I am terrified of clowns, just putting that out there. That said, I saw this little CP of a “Pierrot” with a silly hat and decided to procrastinate even further and attempt to fold it.
As part of a weekly challenge on the Sydney Origami Inc facebook page, I had a go at David Nudd’s box-pleated 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.
Playing with geometry, it got me thinking about lampshade forms. Correct me if I am wrong but there are the sort of “hang-down” and the “stand-up” types common?
Using 15cm Kami, I began doodling, the blue square form came first – a simple corrugation on the middle half of a sheet, folded in eighths only in the middle section it curves perfectly and creates a rather regal “ruff” – imagine nice/interesting/handmade paper and diffuse light in the middle of that.
Researching tessellations, I stumbled across a paper, written by Helena Verrill (Queens University, Kingston, Canada) that generally introduced the concept and looked at a number of common tiling patterns, but the first CP is one I had not seen before:
I did a small tester and loved (fluked) the collapse, and decided to scale up to a full A3 sheet, starting with a square grid. Then nested adjacent squares are layed in on diagonals to provide odd inverse hinges.
I am quite happy with this, and if more ambitious, I would fold it much smaller on a larger sheet – it would make amazing dragon skin.
Over the last few years I have played with origami tessellations – the theory of a repeatable pattern that interacts with other repeats (molecules) is fascinating and a real testament to the accuracy of the pre-folding. As part of another project, I have been exploring triangle grids, and a devilishly tricky to collapse hex-cell tessellation by Robert Lang he calls “Honeycomb”.
Robert Lang’s Honeycomb Tessellation
After folding this a number of times, and then schematicizing the molecule, I noticed that “cells” were deep and, due to the nature of the collapsed layers inside I did not think they were very tidy nor kept their shape nicely. All to often, in origami design, paper thickness is disregarded in the theoretical collapse – in this case hiding away most of the paper in canyons between cells deforms them in ugly ways.
Original Lang molecule (right) and my shallow modified one (left) – same size paper
I started playing with the corner mechanism, and discovered I could halve the height of the cell wall, making the tuck much less bulky and doubling the size of the resultant folded field on the same bit of paper. Additionally it held itself together nicely with edges that are easy to stabilise. With a little practice (I am sure my work colleagues thought me obsessed, given the number of times I folded this tessellated field) I was ready to scale up … well, down in truth as I folded a “tiny” triangle grid on my target mustard leather-grain paper and then set the corner widgets before collapse only to then realise that folding this small was a real challenge with my nerve damaged, fat clumsy fingers.
CP of molecule (red=Mountain, blue=Valley) Thick lines are visible edges, thin are hiddenContinue reading →
As I relax from the 365 challenge, I am finally getting the need to fold again:
Fractal folding is relaxing and yet challenging, Shuzo Fujimoto’s Hydrangea fractal seems to be able to be tessellated also.
In these 2 folds I experimented with different densities of repeat, discovering that accuracy matters – a fraction of a millimeter initially magnifies as the folding progresses. Continue reading →
I have a long and terrifying “fold me” list of models I will one day get around to – this was on it:
An excruciating fractal tessellation that eats paper like few other folds, based on spiral collapses of a dodecagon that then gets turned inside out to make the next level to collapse.
The unfold and re-collapse stages (I did 3, but theoretically could keep going getting smaller and smaller) looks like it is going to hell in a handbasket, then it sort of just sorts itself out in a magic sort of way. Continue reading →
I must admit to being a bit of a fanboy when it comes to the works of Satoshi Kamiya. His designs are genius, fabulously complicated to fold and make good use of the sheet:
This is his Octopus – an amazing fold from an octagon that yields lovely little legs, a beady set of eyes and a pendulous 3D head/body with a modicum of paper torture. Continue reading →
Life is a delicate balance, kind of like being on a tightrope way above the ground in the bigtop. Balance is important, lots of things effect balance:
Work, life, play, people, things that all take their toll on our balance, and we all struggle to walk the line sometimes, tipping this way and that as various forces pull at us. Continue reading →
Apparently there is a lolly in Holland called “Drop” – it is most likely a salted licorice, must look that up. This box is designed to gift “drop” to friends:
When I first saw the model I was sure it was a bomb … I mean, look at it! Continue reading →
David Huffman is a bit of an origami enigma it seems – he pioneered a bunch of tessellations and surface corrugations and seems to be one of the first to explore curved creases and their bizarre effects on flat sheets:
This is is “Arches” tessellation, an intriguing offset brick valley folded grid that then has parabolic mountain folds at each intersection. The resultant sheet is really hard to tidily collapse (in my experience) – perhaps it was the paper or the scoring technique I used to form the parabolas, or perhaps it was the parabola itself – with no guidelines I just sort of guessed a curve.
You get a sort of waterbomb base forcing one trough deep into the arch of an adjacent fold – when it is tidied up it is fascinating – I could see uses for this as an interesting textural pattern or ambient light panel as it makes funky patterns when backlit. Continue reading →
This time of year is horrible. The plain truth of it is that, for a teacher, we have more marking than a reasonable person can do, and deadlines that seem impenetrable:
I guess it is why teachers in Australia are payed the big bucks, right? Continue reading →
