Having ordered the book “Origami Masters Bugs – how the bug wars changed the art of origami” I was itching to fold a bug:

Robert Lang is a master paper engineer, I have a few of his books – this is from Origami Insects Volume II and I decided to give it a try – it was way outside my skill ability so I sort of resolved to keep folding until … I couldn’t work out what to do next, if that makes sense. In the end I managed all of the detailing (although some not very elegantly).

The resultant bug is astonishing – the legs are jointed and end in claspers, the head, cephalothorax jointed, it has antennae, horns and is really bug like.

Folded from a 55cm square of Kraft paper, the result is 20cm long tip of horn to end of wing cover. this has taken me an age, folded inbetween marking, reporting and other things, the perfect paper procrastination actually as so many stages were astonishingly complex, followed by repeat that another 6 times – wow.

I have a growing army of bugs, insects and the like lend themselves to origami design, there are lots more to try, try them I will.

I am very satisfied however with this as a first fold – proof to me that accuracy is everything at this level of folding as errors compound. Many of the designs at this level of complexity ignore the thickness of the paper and this is a problem because multiple layers DO take up space and often the folding technique is oblivious tot he fact that you are required to crisply crease a 20 layer section – challenges are part of this extreme sport however.