waterbomb

196: A Werewolf

| wonko

Now I have been a great fan of “Being Human” – particularly the character that plays the werewolf George:

I found this astonishing model by Kade Chan purely by accident – I was googling the telly show to see if there were more episodes planned and found reference to this neato origami model of a werewolf, complete with staring eyes, pricked up ears, ferocious claws and a lovely tail and I knew I had to try it.

This is such a well designed model – entirely doable with copy paper (I used a square cut from an A3 sheet) – with some precision and patience the body comes together without fatiguing the paper too much and astonishing detail is possible because each part is only a few thicknesses of paper, except the arms with are a little bulky towards the end when shaping the shoulders.

I particularly like the claws – scary things they are, with each finger posable and a snarly opposed thumb.

I could only find a vague photo sequence so had to guess in some stages by looking backwards and forwards towards the finished fold to work out what to do at times. This IS amazing, yes, you are right to be impressed – I am.

I will accept a round of applause, and cash to accompany any orders you have for me to fold you one of these.

192: Yoshizawa’s Frog

| wonko

There is great skill in using few folds to suggest the form of a complex creature – few mastered it like Akira Yoshizawa:

I like this fold – deceptively simple, most folds are made without landmarks (ie. you use judgment and “eye” to work out where to fold) and the resultant form is simple yet charming.

I will fold this again – the body has so much potential but I like the minimalistic form also – it’s not easy being green.

181: Piglet

| wonko

I have a lot of pig models, all have their charms – it is interesting that it is a much-folded animal:

This figurative model is quite a simple fold, a nice change of pace on a busy day

An interesting twist on the waterbomb base, it’s body proportions are ok, it has a good snout that could be further modeled as there is lots of paper there, and a fab curly tail.

177: Hedwig

| wonko

Now I am the first to admit I am an out and proud Harry Potter fan. I have consumed all the content JK Rowling has produced on the world of magical and muggle, and particularly like the use of Owl Post:

Looming is the release of Deathly Hollows part 2 and more recently mention of “Pottermore” which I hoped would be an MMO or immersive world because I thought it would be cool to play a character in that realm. sadly Pottermore will not be anywhere near as cool, but maybe more potterverse, but will watch with eager anticipation.

I found the Spanish origami Society’s magazine archive “Esquinas” – in it was this rather splendid owl. the instructions take a lot for granted, annotations in Spanish do not really help but I muggled through.

There is much to love about this model – it stands by itself, rather cheekily and I can imagine it perched on a branch or taking pride of place in an owlery, it has a lovely round tummy, some fascinating eyes (the next time I fold this, now I know what goes where I am sure I could fashion pupils etc) and the overall proportions are neat. this is a clever design because everything tucks inside and there were only a couple of errors in the diagrams that were easy to fix visually.

132: Pyramid

| wonko

In the late 70’s (1979 to be exact), my musical world changed forever. I bought a record (remember them kids – black plastic circular things you put on a turntable) by a then teenage Gary Numan – it was “The Pleasure Principle”:

The music was electronic and I knew I had found my passion, the cover was baffling – a dapper teen in a suit, glancing casually at a glowing pyramid:

A simple re-working of the Waterbomb, some nice symmetry, it is delightfully complete on all sides

Made to celebrate the 30th Anniversary of that album, and the fact that I am going to see him and his band in concert tonight (WOOO!) supported by Severed Heads. Very excited by both, just quietly, as I had long given up home of ever seeing either live and resigned myself to collecting all their recorded works.

115: Anzac Digger’s Slouch Hat

| wonko

Now I know what I was going for here, but could not find anything that quite did the job. An iconic symbol of our diggers, the “slouch” hat is a distinctive Akubra with one side of the brim held up by a “rising sun” badge, the other flat(ish) and a sort of dimpled crown. Why a slouch hat? Well, today is Anzac Day and whilst I struggle to be involved with any military action (and doubt I would be brave enough anyway) I can only admire those who put their life on the line for something they believe in (or are ordered to do).

I fold this in memory of Bill O’Donnell, and the plethora of service personnel who are now only with us in fond memory.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.


Now I think I have the “intent” of this hat, if not the polish of a published design. I found a rough “bush” hat, based on a waterbomb base by Darren Scott and sort of improvised from there with the basic form

I am sure, if I had pre-planned a little better, I could have used the gusset on the raised brim side to form a sunrise badge (and indeed, if you look carefully you can see the frayed remnants of a failed attempt).

Raising a circular crown was not something the flat paper wanted to support, forming the dimples was difficult as each curve made the brim curve oddly, but I think the profile is right.

Hope it is a fitting Anzac tribute.

103: Baby Loggerhead Turtle

| wonko

When our kids were little, we holidayed at Mon Repos near Bundaberg to watch the annual turtle egg laying and hatching.

This model reminds me of the lovely little turtle hatchlings we watched, in the still of the night, emerge from their underground clutch and waddle clumsily towards the ocean. In truth they were about this size and sadly, only one or two of the entire clutch of hundreds of eggs will survive to adulthood.

Nice simple model, busy day, you can make one too: http://donyaquick.deviantart.com/gallery/?offset=24#/d224qix

96: An Eagle

| wonko

Now I have learned something from folding this model – I do not understand a world of Polish:

All the instructions were in that dialect, and the diagrams were baffling, so I did my best.

I rather like the feet, the wings and head/beak are nicely shaped also but I could not fathom what to do with the tail so … improvised.

85: House Gecko

| wonko

Recently I have noticed a proliferation of geckos around our house – after research it seems it is not a native but an introduced species. The “Asian Hose Gecko” apparently came over amongst ship cargo and now is over-competing with our native species:

I like these little fellows, even though they are illegal aliens – they eat bugs (we have not seen a roach or many moths for ages) but they get everywhere, crap inelegantly on everything and make a loud but cute “clucking” sound when they are randy – unfortunately this is usually in the middle of the night when all else is quiet and asleep.

This model was torture, and a result of poor planning on my behalf – I cut the largest 4×1 rectangle possible from an A4 page to begin this model and then realised that this was TINY (well, in fact, the model turned out LIFESIZE), given how much torsion the paper would need. The tail is lovely but was hard work, the pattern malformed the head (I dug some paper back out of the body to fix that) and the legs are clumsy (because my fat fingers could not detail stickey-outey bits that small and thick with any great precision (thank goodness for fingernails).

Taken from “Origami 4” by Robert Harbin, designed by Max Hulme, it is a little beauty nonetheless, quite chuffed it worked first-fold when in reality it looked like it was going to hell at a number of junctures. I must try this one bigger.

55: Green Tree Frog

| wonko

Now I like frogs, could not eat a whole one, but they are gentle animals – this model reminds me so much of those lovely soft green ones that we used to get back when the weather worked – you know, they lived under your toilet rim and emerged blinking into the light to feast on moths that fluttered around the flouro tube in the laundry:

I misjudged the scale a bit, sorry – it uses a 2×1 rectangle and initial glimpses at the method seemed to suggest way more crimping than actually was required – he ended up fairly life-size. I like the eyes, and the vestiges of padded feet – must find a more realistic one for my next frog – toes on all 4 feet are not that hard, surely (hahahahaha).

Why a frog? Well, my pastoral care group today (thanks to some superb golf-putting by Josh) won a golf tournament thingy and were presented with a HUGE bag of red frogs – I wisely took them and strategically decided to distribute them evenly AFTER classes finished, else my munchkins would have been bouncing off the walls I reckon with all that sugar and artificially deliciousness.

52: Rock, Paper, Scissors

| wonko

Now in class we are doing algorithms and programming, and a simple logic exercise we are working on is a visual game of Rock, Paper, Scissors:Rock, Paper, Scissors

With relatively few folds, and small squares of paper (4 cut from an A4 page), I managed to fashion 3 hand gestures indicative of the conventional game gestures.

Hope you like them. I shoulda done Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock though – would have been waaaaay cooler.

43: An Ant

| wonko

wow, no I mean WOW! This is a design that, on paper at least, looked impossible. Piotr Pluta designed a way of paper torture (involving 4 lots of 8-way accordion sinking) to extract 6 limbs and 3 body segments typical of an insect – quite honestly I was convinced it could not be done.

…so I cheated and gave parts of it a practice try first – sure I screwed it up (on what are unreasonable first-fold rules) but I learnt something about the successful fold. That said, I am mightily pleased with this one:

Photocopy paper does not withstand being bent so much – at the centre of the thorax (middle body segment) you can see the square’s centre point – a much creased and slightly frayed hole forming from bend fatigue, otherwise it held up remarkably well to a very difficult fold.

Underside and Side view detail

You can see the degree to which the paper has been massaged and tucked away to take an A4-cut square and as if my magic make all the requisite parts of the ant, right down to the mandibles and the puffed out abdomen.

You might like to have a go at this – it is not a beginners fold (and indeed there are aspects of it that I have still to master), but the design is ingenious and worth the time it takes to complete :  ant_diagram

32 White Rabbits

| wonko

An odd tradition I have inherited is to say “white rabbits” as the first thing uttered at the beginning of a month, hence the inspiration of today’s model:Not real sure where that came from, or why a sane, rational adult would do that, but it is ingrained and part of my monthly ritual.

This model is actually a cute variation of a waterbomb (turn it over and it looks just like one) – nice and simple, suggestive of a rabbit without the nit-picking detail of folding every whisker, which is a good thing too as I am buggered after a long day teaching.

It is my SECOND rabbit, different model, so all is fair in love and paper folding I figure.

Have a go yourself: http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-fold-an-origami-bunny-rabbit

6: Strawberry

| wonko

Two views of the same berry, a nice variation of the time-tested and much tossed water bomb base.  Made with a square cut from half an A4 page, the smaller you make these the more realistic the shape.

Quite happy with the hull (or calyx) although some of my more nerdier botanist friends will argue that it should have 5 subdivisions not 4.strawberry