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845: (295/365) Leaf Katydid

| wonko

Insects seem to be a fascination among origami designers – at the height of “bug wars” when designers were competing for the most intricate designs that were  complex, had lots of legs, were thin and realistic renderings and really pushed the boundaries of existing techniques:

This astonishing model starts as a frog base. Through a torturous set of point isolation and narrowing, we get the impossibly thin legs and a lovely set of antennae. Halve this, now fold that in half, then do a double rabbit ear, now halve that … thank goodness for thiiiiin paper and accurate folding. Continue reading →

821: (271/365) Satoshi Kamiya’s Ant

| wonko

After re-subscribing to JOAS, in record time my back-issues of the Tanteidan magazine arrived and along with one of them, a really challenging diagram:

About 170 steps, extreme paper torture and, as a project, something truly terrifying but I knew I needed to try it. Continue reading →

795: (245/365) Tessellated Fractal

| wonko

Further exploring Shuzo Fujimoto’s “Hydrangea” fractal, it seems they can also be tessellated:

This is a 4x fold, but I have seen many many more, closer together also, interweaving and other mind-boggling combinations.

This fold has taken an age – started 4 days ago, finished yesterday (I had already decided on the spring shoot for yesterday’s fold) it is a lovely frame. Continue reading →

725: (175/365) 145 Point Sea Urchin

| wonko

So I ended up scoring an unexpected free afternoon so decided that serious paper torture would be fun:

Gridding then a breathtaking collapse took 4 hours to begin with. I knew I was up for a marathon fold to finish. Annoyingly I did not get this finished before fatigue took me – sometimes you get that. Continue reading →

710: (160/365) Star Luisium Test Fold

| wonko

The internet is an amazing thing, it affords connections between mortals and luminaries in the field:

I noticed Sara Adams (a living legend in the Origami World) was asking for test folders to test diagrams she was drawing and I immediately put my hand up. Continue reading →

625: (75/365) Mariposa

| wonko

I must admit to liking folding insects in Origami – something about the extreme paper wrangling necessary to separate out features from the sheet is a great challenge:

This is Eduardo Clemente’s “Mariposa” or Butterfly. An interesting fold indeed. Continue reading →

593: (43/360) Neal Elias’ “Andres Segovia”

| wonko

When a member of the British Origami Society, I purchased “Selected works of Neal Elias” and continue to find gems within it – this is one such treasure:

Modeled after a classical guitarist in 1970, this model starts with a 3×1 rectangle (8×23 to be exact) and, via miracles of box pleating (a pioneering technique back then) we tease an artist and his instrument. Continue reading →

3D Photography Using Fyuse

| wonko

A friend (waves at Roland!) excitedly showed me a new app called Fyuse that allows you to scan objects and create  interactive 3D photos of them.

For ages I have been increasingly unhappy with flat photos of really complex origami models and this tool seems to solve that problem, so long as the lighting is ok.

Unlike panorama software where you pan scenery and it stitches a long photo into a surround-scape, with Fyuse you focus on the object, moving the camera around it.

You can change the camera angle and do other things to enhance the photo but it is pretty neat – I will definitely experiment with it more.

If viewing this page on a mobile device, tilt and the images move with you in a sort of augmented reality sort of a way – otherwise drag with your mouse pointer to view these models for all sorts of angles.

I like that you can use a flash, move the model as you pan and that it allows you to see the nooks and crannies that would otherwise not be represented in a conventional flat photo

528: Joisel’s Pangolin

| wonko

Few Origami models reach Iconic status, few have the charm and grace of Eric Joisel’s Pangolin. I thought I would have a go at this fold:528Pangolin

Based, in part, on a field of diagonal graduated pleats that are “popped” into scaley plates, shaped simply to suggest tail, head and feet, his folds have a unique life breathed into them. Continue reading →

523: Francis Ow’s Double Cube

| wonko

I seem fixated on modular origami at the moment (a branch I have not really done very much in). When I saw Francis Ow’s Double Cube, I asked him if I could have a go at folding it:523DoubleCube

He generously shared some instructions with me (how amazing is the Internet – it can put you in actual touch with people you consider design legends) and I set about wrestling with the fold. Continue reading →

498: Koh’s Rabbit

| wonko

Every so often a model emerges that has such a naturalistic form that so perfectly represents the subject. This lovely rabbit, designed by Ronald Koh is one such “must fold” figure:498Kohrabbit

This lovely model is a dense fold (the hind quarters are necessary layer-dense to form the necessary flaps for the head), so thin paper is best – I failed on a 14.5cm square of coarse hand-made paper – it was too thick and my fat clumsy fingers could not tease the details but 20cm+ squares of most papers should be fine. Continue reading →

497: Tyrannosaurus Rex

| wonko

I have been on holiday, 6 weeks is a long time between folds but I thought I would ease back into it with a simple model … then I saw Fumiaki Kawahata’s TRex and thought “screw it”:497RexView

Waiting in my kept mail was the last Tanteidan of the previous subscription, this little beauty on the cover and I thought – how hard can this be? Continue reading →

442: Ryujin 1.0

| wonko

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?” Continue reading →