626: (76/365) Little Snail

Spirals have most recently been explored by Tomoko Fuse, but lovely spiral shail shells have existed in traditional origami for a long while before that:

This is Eduardo Clemente’s snail, well, one of them. As a bi-colour model it cleverly manages the 2 colours ensuring the soft slippy bit of the snail is one colour and the rounded spiral of the shell is the reverse. Continue reading

625: (75/365) Mariposa

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

624: (74/365) Babe

It is rare that with relatively few folds the essence of a 4 legged beastie is so well captured:

This is a continuation of the exploration of Eduardo Clemente’s work, his simple pig, charming little critter it is. Continue reading

622: (72/365) Nesting

Sometimes tending the nest is more important than what is happening elsewhere:

This is Edwardo Clemente’s “Mother Bird” (I think that is what it is called, it is all in Spanish) and is a charming little bi-colour model that manages to tease a lovely flappy mother twitter bird, a pair of hungry chicks and a colour contrasted nest from a single sheet. Continue reading

621: (71/365) Little Mouse

Under the weather at the moment, folding while suffering a streaming headcold is not much fun. After 2 model fails, I thought I should go simpler:

I stumbled across an obscure book by Eduardo Clemente called “Papiroflexia”, it is full of historically revolutionary designs I must try. Continue reading

620: (70/365) Montroll’s One-Sheet Omega Star

Modular stars are a thing, there are many beautiful ones including multi-sheet omega stars (8 pointers), but this little beauty is crafted from a single uncut square:

From a sunken waterbomb base we tease xyz planes then fashion points from their intersections – genius. Continue reading

618: (68/365) Plesiosaurus

Prehistory must have been an amazing time, evidence of such fantastical beasts continue to boggle the mind. The air was full of ferocious snappy things, land was populated by ferocious snappy things and the oceans were the same:

This is Lu Hao’s “Plesiosaurus”, a rich, dense and interesting fold that results in a serpentine necked swimming snappy thing after a complex process of hiding most of the sheet. Continue reading

617: (67/365) Narwal

There is a mystical beast called a Narwal – the unicorn of the sea:

I am lead to believe this is a real critter, and their nose horn seems (at least from photos I fond on Google) to be impractically long but there you go – evolution is an odd natural force. Continue reading

616: (66/365) Nollentonk

When I was a kid, apparently I used to call elephants “Nollentonks”, not sure why but there you go:

This is Chuya Miyamoto’s Elephant, a wonderfully complex fold that, like most folds of this critter, focuses on the head and trunk first then sorts a body out of what paper is left. Continue reading

614: (64/365) Brickwork Fireplace

Brickwork tessellations are a bit of work, but it is nice to see a model that uses the tessellation as the texture of another structure:

This is Ichiro Kinoshita’s “Fireplace by Brickwork”, a torturous fold that requires a ton of pre-creasing and as the scale I chose (square cut from an A3 sheet), the final crease lines end up about 4mm apart on fairly heavy paper – not, in retrospect, a good choice. Continue reading

612: (62/365) Minecraft Golden Snitch

Potter Nerds and Minecraft Nerds unite, for I present to you a “Minecraft” style cubey golden snitch:

This buzzy little bugger would be difficult to catch in a full on game of Quidditch indeed. This is Riccardo Foschi’s “CuBird”, an interesting little CP that collapses with a little wrangling to make a lovely little cube and enough paper to fan out a quite solid set of wings. Continue reading

611: (61/365) Pocket Godzilla

I remember as a kid being a fan of most things science fiction, and loving Japanese monster movies particularly:

There is something rather charming about a monster, effected by radiation, growing really big then being annoyed by greedy people, subsequently reeking havoc on highly populated areas of Japan. Continue reading

610 (60/365) Formula 1 Racer

I like a challenge, so started with a huge (60cm) square of spotty bi-colour kraft paper and began the process of folding this model:

Formed, initially from a base that is 4 adjacent bird bases that are then sunk to make 8 long flaps, 4 short ones and a shedload of hidden paper, you then tease the long flaps into position for axles, spoilers, tyres and more. Continue reading

609: (59/365) Leia Organa

“Help me Obi Wan Kenobie, you’re my only hope’:

This is my second attempt at Tadashi Mori’s “Leia”, a fun fold that does so much with a tortured little piece of paper. Continue reading

608: (58/365) Master Yoda

Do or do not, there is no try:

This is Stéphane Gigandet’s “Yoda”, a lovely simple Star Wars character fold taken from a video I found on a Chinese version of a ebsite (the English version is here) – try it you should. Continue reading