Satoshi Kamiya’s Ryujin series is legendary in the Origami Community. Starting at the relatively simple 1.0 (folded here),  the next iteration is 1.2, then a new morphology 2.1 culminating in the insane 3.5:

Whilst I am not sure I have the time nor skill to even attempt 2.1 (let alone 3.5), my attempt at 1 is chronicled here.

After finding much discussion about it on the HK Origami Forum, and only being able to find a blurry (published by Satoshi himself deliberately blurry) I reasoned “how hard could this be?”

There is much unexplained here, indeed I sort of just played around with the creases until something dragony emerged – I am sure it is not “correct” as there are odd gathers near the tail and the head is not as I have seen, but I am pretty happy with it overall.

One sheet of paper (70cm sq kraft), long serpentine shape, insanely complicated head, lizard-like stick-out-at-the-sides legs, a lovely tail and hint at scales down the body (diamond pleats left over from hiding all the non dragon bits) makes this quite a model indeed.

The next iteration will need some serious time, planning and research and a HUGE bit of paper – to be honest I am not sure I want to think about starting it as I know if I do I will obsess until I finish it. Exams and marking loom, I am time poor and I do not need more procrastigami in my life right now.

This model needs foil-backed paper at the least, I used MC and a wire backbone to reinforce the shape – some parts are really think and make modelling painful but I am glad I arrived at something that looks dragony and can rest on my dragon-wrangling laurels for a moment.

…although, if I work from strips, fold half the 2.1 crease pattern per 70x140cm rectangle I could then .. no, no, NO! (Well, not for now at least)