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338: Maekawa’s Triceratops

| wonko

I have folded a few dinosaurs, some have been simple but this little beauty has a good body shape and a fab head:

This is Jun Maekawa’s Triceratops – folded from his book “Genuine Origami”. There is something calming about folding a Maekawa model – I needed calming down as I had a model fail today – some super complex one with Russian instructions that made only partial sense.

I discovered Maekawa’s work relatively late in this project – there are many more in her collection that I would like to try – his models seem to have a “character” to them, difficult to isolate but her style is evident.

Near the end of a massive project – holiday time will see a mix of complex, ball-breakingly super complex and simple, I suspect – depends on where my head is at. I _want_ to pretend I have had a plan but, honestly, for the most part each day I decide there and then what I feel like folding – as evidenced by the mostly blank spreadsheet ahead of the day I have just folded. I like that tension (except when I arbitrarily try something too hard for me – you get that).

Very disappointed with the auction idea – after so much encouragement, to receive only 3 bids so far is disheartening and very depressing, thinking of abandoning the whole idea (and 4 of the 12 voices in my head are urging me to return to the bonfire idea) – you get that I guess, Internet “interest” is different from real interest in many ways.

337: Hercules Beetle

| wonko

Woke up, brain would not stop, so thought I would punish it with a super complex Satoshi Kamiya model:

This is his Hercules Beetle and it is snarly to fold indeed – even at this scale (I started with a 54cm square) there are terribly fiddly bits.

The details here are a little dizzying – six thin legs, a pair of pedipalps, wings, separate wing covers, a lovely 3d abdomen and a snarly pokey-outey head thing.

I think, even with lithography paper, this model was a real challenge – I would gather something like tissue foil would be more suitable. Still, very little paper fatigue after nearly 3 hours of folding and such a dense body fold, this is quite an achievement to actually finish it.

I have a few Satoshi models still to try, including the Ancient Dragon – his design style is distinctive. I am amazed at the ease I now leap into a complex open sink, hideously complicated collapse and snarly swivels.

336: Maekawa’s Cow

| wonko

Always on the lookout for a good COW, I stumbled across this little beauty:

This is Jun Maekawa’s Cow, an interesting fold containing many new techniques for me, particularly treatments for flaps you need to multiply (ie. one stickey-outey bit that becomes 3 via some neato crimping and a swivel or two).

I like this, it reminds me of those old world illustrations of cows that appear almost rectangular – great painters are not necessarily accurate anatomists.

Not sure if I have room for more cows in this project – we shall see what turns up. A little brain-fragged at the moment, a good rest after a particularly brutal week will be welcome.

335: White Rabbits!

| wonko

A pinch and a punch for the first day of the month:

This is Jun Maekawas Rabbit, a lovely 3d head and body and an interesting development – some precision needed in the early stages else it catches up with you later on.

This is my LAST first day of the month – woo hoo! that means only 30 Models to go after this one.

Of the rabbits I have folded this year, I think my favourite one would be Lang’s – something about the body shape and ears. They are all good – bid on one if you are so moved.

334: The DEVIL is in the DETAIL

| wonko

I have grown to respect a number of designers of all nationalities and Fernando Gilgado from Spain is one who is guaranteed to produce a challenging model:

This is the Demon, and the devil in the details, trust me – his head alone is frightening – 2 sets of horns, beard, snarly mouth, eyes etc. His body is very dense, arms and legs 20+ layers of paper but that bunching results in the most splendid wings and a pointy demonic tail.

This instruction set was a real challenge – apart from folding it during school time (in between end of year report checking and tidying up), the instructions were in Spanish, and some aspects of it were very fiddly indeed. Even at 54cm x 54 cm, the head and facial features were too small to fold tidily, still, as a first fold I am very pleased with this. It is a monster, wing span of nearly 30cm and he looks very menacing – in a cutey sort of way.

I thought the “angels” of yesterday needed some “demons” today to bring some sort of balance to the paper cosmos. A suitable end of my second last month of this challenge.

332: Elephant

| wonko

You know when you get a song stuck in your head, and it will not go away? Usually the song is totally daggy but so solidly lodged in your psyche that it effects your judgement:

“Baby Elephant Walk” is stuck in my head at the moment – I will excorcise it with some Rammstein later but for now my mind turns to folding elephants. This is my first fold of John Montroll’s Elephant (taken from his book “Origami Sculptures”).

Not really happy with it – an early inaccuracy compounded through the model making the legs asymmetrical and the shoulders gape – you get that sometimes. I quite like the head/ears/trunk and the rear has modelling potential. I will fold this again, when I have more time, if I remember (unlike an elephant, I forget things all the time).

327: Octopus

| wonko

Now normally, there is a set of directions that I follow to make someones model – we origamists call them diagrams. Sometimes diagrams have yet to be made for a model but some enterprising designer unfolds their creation and traces all the folds as a starting point – we call this a crease pattern:

This delightfully devious and slippery fellow was folded from my first crease pattern – you can see it here: octopusCP. Naturally, folding from a crease pattern is much more challenging as there is NO indication as to what folds are done first.

Sipho Mobona is a masterful paper engineer and is responsible for beautifully naturalistic models but finding diagrams of his models is really hard work, so you sort of have to … improvise.

Had I not done the Hoodie, all those months ago, I would not have had a hope in hell of achieving this model – pre-creasing into 32ths was painful, literally, then crumpling along selected folds was problematic (I originally crumpled it inside out, only to unfold and re-crumple the right way round).

The details here (pity the photos do not really do it justice) are amazing – we have 2 lovely bulbous eyes, a siphon (the thing they jet alone with when in a hurry), 8 beautifully curly tentacles and a pendulous and tasty-looking body. genius from one square of paper, no cuts, no glue, no shortness of swearing.

Very happy with this fold – I learnt a lot along the way but he is soo cute, very octopi-like and I could spend hours just re-positioning the tentacles for lifelike crawley poses – very cute.

You may applaud now, and pass the lemon and cracked pepper – delicious on a bbq’d octopus indeed.

326: Rough End First

| wonko

All too often we feel like we are dealt the “rough end” of the pineapple:

It is a curious expression that, I think at least, has something to do with inserting said pineapple in a pineapple-unfriendly place (makes my eyes water just thinking about it).

This is a pleated structure designed by David Petty and it contains techniques I will use elsewhere.

You can see the pineapple-like structure (squint, close one eye, through a mirror) … yeah, there it is and this design is meant to be folded with duo coloured paper, as the top would then be a different colour to the bottom – neat.

I have seen much larger paper sculptures using this “stretched pleated rib” technique and now I know how they were made, which is a good thing.

Paper and folding is taking up waaaay too much of my life right now – have other things I HAVE to do but will somehow muddle through,

325: 3 of 11 Dimensions – XYZ

| wonko

Now in my understanding, life/existence as I know it exists in 4 dimensions (X, Y, Z and Time):

I am trying to understand physics, it does my head in when they talk of strings and the need for 11 dimensions to make sense of them.

Busy day, a modular to bridge the gap. This nice little modular by David Petty.

Happy with this as a first fold. Other things in the pipelines.

324: Gandalf theWhite

| wonko

“You Shall NOT Pass!!!!” Now if you are a Lord of the Rings fan, you will recognise the significance of that, if not you will cynically decide that is my comment on the coming exam season (no, students, I do not mean it that way – relax):

This lovely White Wizard is designed by Victoria and Vladimir Serov, and was first made by me MONTHS ago and packaged up and sent to York in the UK to a friend as part of a Christmas hamper.

He has been travelling for months and arrived yesterday (our time), Today (their time) so I can finally post it as part of this blog.

I have actually folded this 3 times – let me explain: the instructions are in Russian (no, I do not speak Russian either) and even with the best translation engines available I could not for the life of me work out which way was up. With my tissue foil there is a good side and a back side and first time I folded it I realised near the end that the paper was the wrong way round. So I folded a second one (knowing I wanted to keep one and send the other) and ended up making exactly the same mistake again (stupid me), so UNFOLDED IT, reversed all the creases and re-folded it the right way around. thank goodness for good paper.

The resultant lovely grasps (with fantastic little hands) a gnarled wooden staff, has a fantastically detailed face – frown, curled moustache, beard, and a lovely robe, topped off with a pointy wizard hat.

Extraordinarily fiddly, at times I had to walk away, calm down before returning to it – 2mm pleats are not fun with fat, clumsy fingers.

After months in a box, travelling via seamail, the White Wizard arrives safely in York and now takes pride of place. Very happy with this model, so much character and a suitable “Happy Christmas” inclusion for Mike and Colette.

323: Satoshi’s Smilodon

| wonko

The smilodon is often called the “Saber-toothed Tiger” but is not a tiger at all:

This lovely (extinct) beastie is a Satoshi Kamiya masterpiece, a real exercise in restraint – resisting the urge to set creases early to get nice, rounder shapes later.

I had no idea what was what with this model – as my first fold I learnt a lot from this – I found the lower jaw very fiddly and in the end it did not look a lot like a jaw in my opinion, but the head, saber-like front teeth, haunches and rest of body are beautifully proportioned.

This took me an age (well, in truth 3.5 hours) and although the pattern suggested a 25cm square, I went bigger – 38cm square of lithograph paper and that was fiddly enough.

I like this a lot, it is very cat-like but emanates raw power and ferocity (regardless of how cuddly characters like “Diego” in the Iceage franchise was, these guys must have been snarly and fearsome up close and  personal).

322: Fledgling

| wonko

Comes time in the life of all magpie chicks, when pin feathers have moulted and the adult feathers, shiny and new are through, untested. The fledgling inches to the edge of the nest, mindful of the effects of gravity. With encouragement, and a gentle nudge, the fledgling spreads its wings, tenses the flight muscles it has been exercising more recently. In an act of self belief, it launches into the great blue yonder:

This is Jun Maekawa’s Crow (or similar, cannot read the Japanese, sorry) – I like that this bird looks like it needs to grow into it’s feet and wings – much as I imagine a fledgling does.

Why a fledgling? A new batch of year 12s launch itself into the real world today. Their future is entirely in their hands, the potential is all there, they will make of it what they see fit. I hope they look after each other, and themselves, that they make the world a better place to be and never forget that they can make wonderful things happen if they can be bothered.

Happy with this as a first fold, lovely feet, nicely proportioned body, economy of use of paper, great design.

321: Zombeh!!!

| wonko

I love it how you can have a serious and in-depth discussion with students about Zombies:

They are experts – both the “undead” and “infection” zombies could, like, totally happen – yeah, and it is well understood how to dispatch them.

Having not long finished an adaptation of Jane Austin’s classic tale “Pride and Prejudice (and Zombies)” I am in touch with my undead self.

Well, in truth, I am a little undead zombie myself – marking does that to my brain, with perilously close deadlines and waaaaay too much to actually do before it, I neeeeeed braaaaaaiiinnnsss!!!

This is Jun Maekawa’s Zombie – well, I assume that is what it is as the book I got it out of is entirely in Japanese and I cannot read it, so, yeah. I love this posture of this model, the hands reach out sinisterly and there is just enough of a facial expression to know he is gunning for your fresh brain.

Glad I used a scrap of lithography paper for this model – copy paper would not have let me puff out and flatten the face before disintegrating.

320 Kasahara’s Mouse

| wonko

Now I like a good rodent, particularly one that is simple to fold but lovely in proportions – this mouse is such a beastie:

A tough fold in an A4-cut square to be honest, but the tinyness of it is worth the pain and bruised finger tips due to the thicknesses of the folds.

Lovely ears, poseable arms and legs and a splendid tail – from relatively few folds actually, glad I have found this one, I think I will add this to my “can do by heart” collection because of the finished shape.

Busy day, lots going on – lots of it red pen on things that need marking – hate this time of year, you get that sometimes.

I must investigate the animals of Kunihiko Kasahara some more – nice touch with the media, classic style.

318: Dromedary

| wonko

On review, I have not folded many camels – I have no idea why this is:

This is John Montroll’s “Dromedary”, a one-humped Arabian camel and there is much to like about the model, if not my first fold of it.

Lovely ears and face, curious sunken hump, legs more or less in the right place.

I might fold this one again, I learned much on the first time through, and it was a mashup of his “camel” instructions to a modified base, so I did not really know what was going to be what until fairly late in the piece (hence the disoriented development pictures).

Busy times, lots to do, spent waaaay too much time on this, you get that.