It is always interesting to receive the latest JOAS Tanteidan Magazine:
On the cover was a model I immediately knew I had to try – Yoo Tae Yong’s “Quokka”.
As far as I am aware, this is the first Quokka design, and wow, what a beauty. The model is fully featured – in proportion to a real Quokka, and even has a pouch.
Continue readingI am constantly surprised what you can do with the classic bird base:
This is Peter Buchanan-Symons’ “Loch Ness Monster”, a fascinating exercise in colour change and tight accordion pleating that takes the points of a bird base (traditionally 2 wings, a head and a tail) and manipulates them to make 4 stickey-uppey colour-changed flaps that are then bent to produce a familiar outline.
This is a simple model from a forthcoming book “Folding Fantasy Volume 1” that I helped edit – some lovely challenges therein.
One of the things I am doing more and more is being involved in the editing of pre-publish origami books. I was approached by Peter Buchan-Symons on his forthcoming book “Fantasy Origami”:
I have folded many of his models testing as I check sequences, but seriously love this little guy – such a clever use of paper.
I folded this little dragon on a 21cm duo Tuttle print (although it is suggested that the first fold should be 25cm+) and the sequence is wonderful, complex and exacting.
Continue readingFrancesco Massimo sent me a diagram, out of the blue, for me to try – such an honour:
I have labelled it a “Danger Noodle” – it is an Eastern Dragon, but it looks way too playful to be dangerous.
Folded as a set of nested rabbit-ears straddling a central pleated gusset, the structure is fairly simple but has the basic morphology correct. I am sure, with some re-engineering, one could make the rear legs a little longer and the head more complex, but as a basic eastern dragon it is a cutie.
Continue readingI sat in on a fold-along on Fakebook a few Sunday evenings ago where Fergus Currie demonstrted the folding of modules for this beauty – I got a little lost but on re-watch managed to nut out what was what:
This is a compound of 3 cubes – each rotated on top of each other – when you see it you see it. It is comprised of 48 modules – 2 different shapes, 3 different colours (8 of each).
The folding is exacting, the angles and constructions accomplished and sophisticated, the tolerances for error are small. I think I was a victim of paper thickness when I folded mine – I used bond A3 photocopy paper because I had some lovely strong colours. The result of this choice was that layers get thick, some of the axes are not as crisp as I would like them to be, but it is finished, having taken a seeming age to fold and assemble.
Continue readingI was invited to a “fold along” on Fakebook live by Fergus Currie, a multi-talented origamist with a penchant for geometric solids, I was free, and thought “why not”:
Fergus demonstrated the folding sequences for 2 models taken from M.C. Escher’s “Waterfall” Lithograph, this one is the 1st stellation of the Rhombic dodecahedron (Escher’s Solid) – a remarkable 12-pointed solid with each unit being a slightly deformed pyramid.
We started with unit folding, then moved on to construction techniques – a fun modular, in Fergus’ style of folding the entire vertex as a single unit, based on a template to geometrically construct the correct angles – neat stuff.
Continue readingIt is not every day you open your email and find a gift from a design legend. Friday Francesco Massimo sent me the diagrams for his Western Dragon, and I knew what I would be folding this weekend:
Having folded many dragons (western and not), I was keen to explore the morphology and layer management of this new model, and pretty soon realised paper selection is REALLY important for success with this model.
Essentially a “birdbase”, 2 structured have been grafted on (a Lang “KNL”-style dragon head, and a luscious set of wings), meaning that the “legs” would emerge from the centre of a tangle near the middle of the sheet, accumulating layers as they were formed.
I decided to fold a maquette from thin crispy Kraft paper first – there were LOTS of baffling manipulations and I did not feel confident to risk nice paper on a first fold. In wrestling with the maquette, I “made good” the wing connection and body trimming, learned about initial angles of things like the neck (deciding I did not like the designed angle, changing it in my final fold), and the sequence for the collapse of the head – the pre-creasing strategy is prone to gross inaccuracies that impact the look and sit of the features, so adopted more of a CP mentality when I knew what was being used for what.
Continue readingEach year for the last 10 or so, as part of the “getting to know you” phase of a new year with my pastoral care group, we fold a kusudama together:
The idea is simple, invite kids to sit, learn how to fold a module, then teach it to another mate … resulting in enough modules to assemble a megastructure.
This year I chose a 30 module designed by Vladimir Frolov, a Russian designer, a lovely starry ball.
The metaphor is really simple: “The WHOLE is greater than the SUM OF IT’S PARTS”
Continue readingI stumbled across the instructions for a glorious checkerboard kusudama designed by Andrey Ermakov, an insanely talented designer from Russia:
I decided to try and make ONE module – an exhausting process that starts with a HEXAGON initially divided into a 16 grid, then you dance through moves that flash and hide the reverse colour of the paper until you get this lovely pattern. This took me in excess of 2 hours!!! For ONE unit!!!!! You then crenelate and interweave them to make a spikey ball, tucking in tips to complete the tessellated surfaces.
Had I no life, and a LOT of paper, I would consider making all 30(!?!?!?!) of these things necessary to make the most complex spikey ball there is – a beauty that is not within my reach (for now) due to time pressures.
It is a timely reminder that astonishing and beautiful things come from Russia; ugly political and military action does not diminish this fact.
So to avoid doing the growing list of things I should be doing, I decided on some procrastigami:
One of the many “I must fold these” models from Xander Perrott’s forthcoming books, this is “Laveau”, a lovely 30 unit spikey flower ball that makes good use of duo paper.
Each unit, based on a 1:root(3) rectangle, folded from Tuttle Vibrant duo, I chose limey/crimson paper and began folding – I always love the almost meditative state you enter when unit folding on a production line – much the same as gridding before box pleating and tessellations.
Continue readingAs part of the privilege of test-folding models for a forthcoming book, I also had access to brilliant new designs. I decided I must fold one of these for myself:
This is “Star Virus”, a relative of “Space Virus” that I had already folded (from his previous book) waaaaay back in 2020 at the beginning of the global pandemic.
The form of this kusudama is glorious – star-shaped protuberances from a glorious faceted sphere – reminiscent of the most popular visualisation of the Covid 19 virus, I decided to fold it in royal purple and yellow because Covid is mutating all the time, and this I see as a mutation of the original in every way.
They say “if at first you don’t succeed, mutate and try again” seems to be the pandemic trajectory – this model has modules that are refined, positively lock and the whole spikey ball was such fun to fold.
Continue readingOver the last couple of weeks I have been granted the privilege of test-folding the models from Xander Perrott’s new Kusudama book “Angular Elegance”:
I bought Xander’s first book “Folded Forms” – a treasure trove of delicate spikey balls. I offered my services as a test folder – to my delight and amazement he said yes.
Test folding is different to model folding, the brief is to see how easy to follow the diagrams are, how reproducible the forms are and what sense the written instructions make.
As all the models in this book are unit-based, I folded 3 or 4 of the modules (rather than the entire 30+) to check the 2 types of joins and how regular the construction methods can become. There is a wonderful mix and variety of spikey balls in this new (as yet unpublished) collection, and the skill levels to complete them range from fairly easy to nearly impossible – which is good, challenges abound for all levels of folder competence.
Xander commonly uses some funky paper ratios in his base-papers. Commonly 1:root(3), but this collection uses 2:root(3) and more exotically 6:5root(3). The paper ratio allows construction of accurate angles (many based of multiples of 60 degrees), and the book demonstrates nicely how to cut sheets of this ratio from more conventional sized paper.
Each kusudama has it’s own quirks, tricks and stress points, all require accuracy and nice paper (most showcase duo coloured paper in flamboyant and wondrous ways).
I have not folded a book “cover to cover” since I was a kid (who only owned a only couple of origami books) – it was an intense but hopefully useful journey as I made notes about the instruction set, unit folding and assembly process, subsequently passing this on to Xander for his consideration.
As I approach retirement age, I can see myself doing more in the meta origami world, having already established myself as an origami book editor and test folder – having time to do this without having to shoe-horn it inbetween school commitments is a luxury I am looking forward to.
I am always looking for folding (and prograstigami) projects, my friends often )helpfully) suggest I “fold the washing” – my question to this is always “into what?”:
This lovely little colour change model is in the latest Tanteidan Magazine (one of many advantages of being a member of JOAS.
Designed by Motoo Ohguchi, I decided to punish a lovely 21cm square of Shibori duo paper, and set about the exacting divisions, colour reversals and smoke and mirrors that form the shape and details.
The layers get really dense, so thin paper (or going large) are solutions – I tried it on 15cm Kami and struggled to shape the collar and other details at this scale and thickness.
Continue readingAn invitation went out on Fakebook to join a “fold along” session with Fergus Currie and, although it was after 11pm local time I thought why not:
Fergus taught the module then construction of a 4-part modular Frustum (a truncated pyramid) – an ingenius and “frustrating” model in that the lock between modules is accomplished using a “latch crimp” tab inside the bent gusset pocket, making the actual construction a little fiddly.
I found I needed to ease the 3rd and 4th modules in place using long-nosed tweezers, when it sits right it locks tight but requires a bit of a controlled jiggle to get it to be seated just right. The final module is a bit of a challenge to insert without dislocating the two either side of it.
Patience and tweezers finally won over and the top half finally was locked tight and tidy, then a simple weave on the bottom flaps complete a lovely truncated pyramid. Material thickness is an issue here – the tab-pocket system assumes material of negligible thickness. If you use heavier paper you need to fractionally adjust either the pocket depth or the tab length – fortunately there are a couple of fold junctures that make this easier.
Continue readingAnyone who owns a lawn realises it is a constant battle to keep it mowed, tidy, healthy and weed free. In a tropical climate like ours, doubly so:
So we have a dandelion problem – hundreds of the little buggers pop their flowers up after I mow and I am loathed to resort to spraying them, chemical solutions are my last resort. I googled the problem and found a no-bend weeding prong that seems custom built to pluck the little suckers root and all.
We ordered 2 (a his and hers set) on the off chance we both would want to do this, the arrived in pieces and after a simple set of instructions they were assembled, ready to go. In our first session on the lawn we easily filled a large bucket with extracted dandelions and realised this was a solution, albeit manual and long term.
In the latest Tanteidan magazine, by pure synchronicity, there were diagrams for a modular dandelion designed by Toshikazu Kawasaki. I set about folding the pieces and, after a fairly simple set of instructions, the dandelion was assembled and ready to go.
