1037: Beth Johnson’s Horse

| wonko

Madly, I agreed to participate in an international tournament, at the Intermediate level:

Beth Johnson's Horse

Intermediate meant you got a diagram and 72 hours to fold a rendition of it. I decided the “advanced” category was beyond my available time as you only got a CP and presumably relied on the power of prayer.

I gave it a whirl, went for crisp and accurate, but played a little with the flowing style of mane. It was loved by nearly noone who voted – fair enough. Other, less well folded versions (in my opinion) got more “likes” – social media is like that. Useful punch in the face, thanks.

Round 1 of the tournament done … and I am eliminated. Time to focus on more important things.

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1036: From little things, big things grow

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Each year, as an ice-breaker/getting to know you activity with my pastoral care group at the beginning of a school year I try to involve them in a collaborative origami megastructure:

90 unit sonobe spikey ball in construction

Many hands made light work of the 90 sonobe modules, folded from Terracey colours (red, black, white). From little things, big things grow, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts (roll out the well trodden metaphors).

90 sonobe unit spikey ball finished

The construction has taken an age – 5 false starts until I discovered the module grouping – in the end it turned out to be alternating 5s and 6s on each vertex of each 6. Each sonobe module contributes 1/3 of a pair of adjacent points – and with careful colour planning no 2 colours are beside each other (well, that is nearly the case – in 2 places I was forced to break this rule, but you really have to look to find them).

spikey ball scale

90 modules take time, and most of the kids in the pastoral care group folded at least one – a true collaboration that results in a lovely spikey ball that will join the other treasures from previous years.

1035: Hand and Boat

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It is the days you do not look in your mailbox that mail arrives – I arrived home from work to find an astonishing collection of paper from Pham Hoang Tuan’s origami shop, and a couple of his diagrams, all screaming “fold me!”, so I started that journey:

"Hand and Boat" by Pham Hoang Tuan

I had only ever seen this model complete and in CP form, failed at solving that CP 2 times and had given up folding it for now, then it arrived in diagram form to my delight.

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1034: Eric Joisel’s “Harlequin”

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A few months back, in the relative calm of my summer holidays, I began to re-fold “Harlequin” designed by Eric Joisel, after failing to successfully fold it during the “Tribute of Eric Joisel” competition I was part of late last year:

"Harlequin" designed by Eric Joisel

I took my time, learned lots from initially failing, made sectional maquettes to check techniques and really enjoyed the process of folding.

"Harlequin" designed by Eric Joisel in the round
http://www.wonko.info/365origami/wp-content/uploads/1034HarlequinViews-scaled.jpg

This model is such a synergy of techniques – I can see influences from so many of Joisel’s other creations (many of which I have folded before). The initial collapse is vaguely humanoid, but the shaping is the making of model. So many details to control. The face and hat are tricksy but I an really happy with the level of detail I managed here – he has a playful but chilled character, smug smile and refined face – the mask is jauntily sitting on his nose also.

The fabric effects to the sleeved and pantaloons are a nightmare – to make them seem to “drape” is really hard I found, but eventually it came together. I pre-creased some quilted effect on the bodice and skirt which I am really happy with, and the collar took me ages to nut out. He is in full stockings (diamond pattern), has goofy shoes, a fly-away in-action wavey cape and open hands – so many bits were there waiting to be shaped. One can only marvel at the genius of the design.

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1033: Ducks in a row

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Ducks and Drakes usually are different – apart from gender, the drake is usually the pretty one, a quite common convention in the bird world:

Shiri Daniel's Ducks

Each model is folded from a sheet of the same paper, one the reverse of the other to create the different plumage patterns.

Shiri Daniel's Ducks view

A lovely fold sequence is really efficient, so entirely achievable using 15cm origami paper (I have so much of this, and rarely use it). I decided on some teal-ish Yuzen, and the results are lovely.

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Empty

| wonko

Friends are precious, real friendship takes work. The loss of a friend hurts and leaves a yawning void.

Rest now Michael Brent (Winston O'Boogie) O'Donnell

Rest now, my dear friend Michael Brent (Dr Winston O’Boogie) O’Donnell 05/01/1954 – 25/01/2021.

1032: Endless Garden

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Cruising Fakebook, as one does, I came across a fascinating origami geometric mindf*ck:

Edu Solano Lumreras' "Endless Garden"

Edu Solano Lumbreras kindly shared instructions for his design, having adapted the techniques used in Thoki Yenn’s “Umulus Rectangulum” corners, to make this tesseract like cubic möbius strip.

Comprised of 6 modules, with some exacting pre-creasing that lends itself to template work, you fold bent square tubes with 3 corners – the shortest corner makes the “tab”, the opposite end becomes the “pocket”.

A4 rendering

Folding in a4, the geometry is just as elegant, if exacting.

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1031: Cubes Tessellation

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Looking through my Origami Library, I realised I had bought “Origami Tessellations for Everyone” by Ilan Garibi back as the pandemic hit early last year, and realised I had yet to fold anything from it at all:

Cubes by Ilan Garibi
A field of cubes

Early last year was crazy times – bushfires, floods and then lockdown from Covid-19, this book got buried in my reading pile so it is time to begin the journey of exploring tessellations more formally.

Starting at the beginning, with the “Cubes Family”, this is “Cubes”, a deceptively simple tessellation of twisted cubes. I present the “molecule” – that is the tileable unit:

Cubes by Ilan Garibi Molecule
Cubes “molecule”
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1030: Satoshi Kamiya’s Horse

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Further exploring all things equinine, I realised I had never folded Satoshi Kamiya’s horse:

Satoshi Kamiya's Horse

Central to this horse design is a lovely mane, but the volume and proportions of this model are amazing, the base it originates from is immediately “horsey”.

Shaping matters, and I think I have been a little clumsy, but I suspect some of the fat is the paper – crisp 70cm kraft – I think if I had used a thinner/more textured paper the result would look less like a plastic horse.

There are lots of really challenging moves in this sequence – gathering the pleats to allow you to fan out the mane while not distorting the outside layers in mindboggling – there is LOTS of paper hidden, and I think my accuracy for this, the first fold, was pretty good.

Satoshi Kamiya's Horse scale

I must chase up a copy of Issei Yoshino’s book – that horse has a mane that apparently inspired Satoshi to design this one.

1029: Hideo Komatsu’s Horse

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Always on the look out for an elegant depiction of a horse, a contact on Insta posted his fold of this model (a model I had not seen before), and I knew I had to try it:

Hideo Komatsu's Horse

There are many stunning origami horses – my favourite 2 of note are David Brill’s (folded from a triangle) and Satoshi Kamiya’s (which I have yet to fold).

Hideo Komatsu's Horse views

This model has the proportions and majesty of a fine racing horse and the fold sequence is a lot of fun – you have to be accurate and exercise restraint throughout to get an elegant form.

Folded from a 40cm square of Tant (a little heavy for this design, but I liked the colour and texture so persisted), I think I have a new favourite – such a beautiful horse, and lovely internal structure also.

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1028: Montroll’s Butterfly

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Flipping through “Bugs and Birds in Origami” by John Montroll one gains an appreciation for the clear design skills on show:

Montroll's butterfly

This is Montroll’s “Butterfly” – published in 2001, representing ‘old school’ design, the resultant model is lovely, efficiently uses paper and is morphologically pretty accurate – all this without the hundreds of instructions typical of more modern designs.

Montroll's butterfly views

Folded from a 30cm square of Daiso unryu (do they still make this? i have not been able to buy it for years), the work to isolate legs and antennae is delicious (if requiring precision) folding, and overall is a fun sequence minimally diagrammed.

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1027: Wasp

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I was scheduled to go on a weekend away with the missus, then the State Government called a 3-day lockdown because of a small outbreak of a new strain of Covid-19, so found myself home with some time on my hands:

Stephen O'Hanlon's Wasp

After 2 glasses of wine, I decided to see what Kraft paper could do, and decided to throw a 70cm square of white/natural at Stephen O’Hanlon super complex wasp photodiagram design.

Stephen O'Hanlon's Wasp views

I fully intended to stop when it failed – Experience has taught me that insects like this require really thin paper, but I just kept folding and the model worked out pretty well. There is a lovely proportion to this model and the sequence is intense (I must have some skills because the wine seemed no impediment) and fun, borrowing from many designers – namely Shuki Kato, Robert Lang and Anibal Voyer – having folded from all these designers I can certainly feel the influences.

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1026: Happy New Year

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Now 2020 is winding up fast, and I say for the most part – good riddance. We decided to stay home, low key, but New Years Eve is not complete without “fireworks”:

Star Pocket Kusodama

I decided to fold a modular, found a relatively simple one then discovered it challenging because of volume and construction. This model is my fireworks – an explosion of colour and emergent geometry.

Star Pocket Kusudama views

Folded from 90 separate pieces of paper, 30×1:2 rectangles and 60x 1/2:1 triangles – I decided to go with cherry blossom tones, the resultant “Star Pocket Kusudama”, designed by Sansanee Termtanasombat (Praew) from Thailand is a geometric treat indeed.

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Gieseking Bends and Shifts

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Exploring the geometric folds of Rebecca Gieseking, I was taken with cyclindric transformations:

Gieseking cylinder transformations

Using calculated crease patterns, a cylinder can be “shifted” using a peculiar tapered spiral, or “bent” using a curved “gusset” – interesting stuff,

Gieseking cylinder transformations views

Folded using printer paper, I think it would look nicer with slightly heavier paper, the trick is accuracy and crisp creases. I must explore these techniques more.

1025: Polly Wants a Cracker! Now!!!!!

| wonko

The post title reminds me of the punchline of a favourite joke: “What does a 10 tonne parrot say?”:

Gastronis Skeleton

This is a “Diatryma gigantea” (aka “Gastronis”) skeleton, designed by Mase Eiichiro based on fossil records. In real life this beastie would have been scary indeed.

Gastronis Skeleton views 1

Nicknamed “murder bird”, it seems paelontologists are divided as to whether it was a herbivore, carnivore or omnivore – it was HUUUGE – like 7ft tall, and the musculature marks around the beak suggest it had a titanic bite. Curiously it has no other “predator” characteristics – like a hook at the end of the beak or shredding talons on it’s feet, making it a confusing snarly. The first skeletal reconstruction of fossil remains happened in the early 1920s, and the result looked more like a 9ft emu (seems they had parts of a number of different animals in the one model).

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