Although (technically) a re-fold, the last time I attempted to fold this I had a partial crease pattern and a broken incomplete set of instructions in Russian, and just muddled along. I am not sure the resultant model even looked like Wall-E, but I was happy to sort of nut out a scheme for making his tracks.

I stumbled across a set of partial diagrams by “Tosummerny” in Chinese that seemed to surface more of the actual process, so decided I had to have another go.

I went big – 90cm square – seems excessive …but … I have another exhibition pending and thought this might make a good display piece if it ended up tidy enough.

The diagrams clarify the construction of the pleats necessary to form the main body, and how they cleanly articulate to make the beautifully treaded tracks, and also simplified what I had in my previous attempt mangled together to form the eyes.

I really enjoyed the fold sequence, and realised fairly quickly it was going to be BIG, and therefore would need a wire armature to hold it up. The pleats are structured so that there are a number of completely logical places to add supporting wires. This allowed me to have poseable arms and fully structural shaped tracks on which he stands completely stable.

I think I managed to tease some of the character out of this little Pixar screen star – the main emotive features are the eyes, hands and tracks, this model treats these beautifully. Very happy to have my own little pet trash compactor robot … perhaps he can be convinced to take over the housework?