box pleat

198: Walkies (aka tree watering time)

| wonko

We live in a fairly quiet suburb and we like (not often enough sadly) to go for walks – as do dog owners who do it as much to get some exercise as to “empty their pet”:

I saw this exercise in box pleating and thought it had promise – starting with a grid of 24ths, you collapse and form a dog with leg cocked.

The tree (as per the instructions) was merely a fan – I thought that a bit boring so added some extra pleating to make a couple of branches and proceeded to add a fork in the trunk and some semi-crumpled foliage. With a little more crumpling the shapes would be nice and soft and gum-tree foliage like which is what I was aiming for.

I left it angular, as homage to the original design and to make it explicit what I had done to modify it – love it or hate it, I am pretty chuffed it worked given how fiddly the dog was. The little wee doggy has nice ears, an open mouth, four nicely formed legs (one lifted against the tree) and a floppy tail – nice.

195: The Eiffel Tower

| wonko

Vive le France – it is Bastille Day and I ask what is more quintessentially French than “Le Tour Eiffel”:

I resisted the obvious froggy references and went straight for a cultural landmark – albeit a fairly ugly bit of schrapnel left over from a world expo.

I like this model – partly because I folded it via a general principle rather than an exact pattern and the technique of “benching” the model is useful for other things I have planned.

Surprisingly, this model is quite rigid after the bottom layer is scalloped – must make another one for the French department, although I am disappointed they did not offer crouissant or other baked treats to celebrate.

182: Canadian Bull Moose

| wonko

Now I was told it was Canada Day on July 1 by Peter and Jen, and they kindly asked me to fold them a moose (after seeing a picture of the finished model on google) … if it was not too much trouble.

Fortunately i had a copy of “Origami Design Secrets” by Robert Lang, which has this as a penultimate box pleating example (typical a mathematician would take the simple art of box pleating to this length), so I thought “why not, can’t be that difficult” – lol.

Now I had some “tissue foil” I had shipped from the origami shop, and was itching to try it out to see how it takes folds. I must admit it is different to what I thought it would be – this is cotton-based, metallic thread impregnated opalescent paper is not a paper and foil sandwich, so will keep looking for a supplier.

Wow, no I mean WOW! – what a difference good paper makes on the fold process – no splits, tears, paper fatigue (except on the folder). I am impressed given the length of this paper torture session and the lengths to which the square was crimped, distorted, pleated, reversed and teased. I began to realise this model was epic after nearly 2 hours of PRE FOLDING was necessary before the first collapse – at one points folding 64ths along one edge – thank goodness for large format paper.

I started this at about 8am – after a bowl of Porridge (with maple syrup – it is CANADA DAY remember) and finished the fold prior to photographing the posed model at 12:45pm!!! 3 cups of tea, 2 panadol and 3 albums of Lawrence English sound art and it is done.

HAPPY CANADA DAY Peter and Jen – thanks for the challenge.

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.

143: Moped

| admin

Now it is my brother-in-law’s Birthday today (Happy Birthday Robert!!!) and he loves all things Motorbike (especially high powered zoomy ones), so I thought I would make him a Moped:

This is doubly hilarious because this little dinky model looks like it would be slower than walking

Made with some simple (if compact and intense) box pleating – no cuts nor glue, this is a well proportioned and fun to fold model.

You should have a go at this yourself – take care, 32nds are a pain to fold on a small piece of paper – Instructions are in Austrian but the diagrams make plenty of sense.

133: Brill’s Bottle

| wonko

I would rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy:

A fully formed container, neck, base, hollow and interesting

I like this design, and was sure it would not work – forming the neck and pleating the base to seal it make it a very clever model indeed.

Folded from the aptly titled “Brilliant Origami” by David Brill. Looks like a spirit bottle – it suggests you fold it out of clear material and put a ship inside it – that would be cool also.

Hope you like it – not bad for such a tired brain.

129: Making a Spectacle

| wonko

Now I had this idea that with box pleating it should be possible to make life-size spectacles:

So I set about experimenting, discovered that I could form 6×6 lenses, a nose bridge and some reasonable length arms with a 4×1 rectangle cut from an A3 sheet:

Quite cool – an original invention, chuffed with the result. hope you like them also – the ultimate in UV protection (and all light for that matter)

Don’t pretend like you do not want to look this cool 😛

And for those faithful following this nonsense, here is my crease pattern/plan so you can have a go yourself:

118: Grammophone

| wonko

In simpler times, music was encoded onto black plastic discs as bumpy valleys a needle would bounce along to extract the sound. In even simpler times that sound was amplified by a large cone, no electricity involved at all:

These days it is all iPods, mp3s, downloads and stealing music – sometimes the older, simpler times were best – certainly stereo turntables create a lovely chocolatey sound that modern digital sampling techniques have lost.

Why a grammophone? the kids at school perform in the formal concert tonight – the symbol of music for me is “His Master’s Voice” which was a grammophone with a dog looking quizzically at it.

This is an interesting box-pleating exercise that at almost every step looked like it was going to hell in a hand-basket. The final opening of the cone was a revelation.

Amusingly my daughter saw on my screen the words “Pagina precedente” and “Pagina successiva” and immediately assumed I was looking at something naughty – when in fact the instructions were in Italian. Folded in 1/12ths, with an interesting collapse to put the record on the turntable first, I like this a lot and hope you do to.

You can have a go yourself also: http://www.origamidauria.it/diagrammi/diagrammigrammofono/grammofono1.htm

109: Brill’s Nut

| wonko

Take a rectangle cut from half a square and torture it via box-pleating:

and you get a nut that actually takes the thread of the bolt previously made with the same hexagonality, nice.

This was an odd fold, it looked like it was going to hell at every stage, the inside collapse looked like it could not work, until it just did. Tucking away all that paper inside to leave a relatively clean hex nut on the outside is paper engineering genius.

Folded from “Brilliant Origami” by David Brill (that is 3 Brill models in a row, time for a change perhaps?).

108: David Brill’s Bolt

| wonko

When I first saw this model I thought it was not possible, but thought I would give it a whirl anyway:

This is a bolt, box pleated to have a functional thread and a beautiful hexagonal do-uppy endy thing (sorry, no idea what you call the end you use a spanner on).

It was a fascinating exercise in crimping and pleating that did not come easily – the pattern of valleys and mountains was challenging to fold in pre-crease stage and more torturous to collapse. I found it difficult to reach inside the tube during the early collapse stage (fingers were not long enough to reach) and resorted to using the bone folder to help out the first few crimps.

This was folded from the appropriately named “Brilliant Origami” by David Brill. It has an accompanying model (the “nut”) that I shall try for tomorrow – they form a pair – could be interesting.

107: David Brill’s Book

| wonko

This model answers the simple question – can you take an A3 sheet and turn it into a book:

Yes, yes you can. I am so glad I decided to go large with the paper on this model – an A4 square would have been very difficult indeed – the result is delightful, spine, hard cover and numerous pages – brill-iant indeed.

There is much to admire about this model. From a paper engineering perspective it cleverly folds away most of the sheet, locking the pages in place and forming a nice stiff “hardback” cover. If you use paper coloured differently on both sides, the cover is one colour and the pages the other – very clever indeed (a little difficult to demonstrate on a white-only fold).

Folded from the appropriately named “Brilliant Origami” by David Brill.

105: Klingon War Bird

| wonko

About time I did something for the trekkers out there – this torturous model is a Klingon War Bird:

Instructions, in German, suggested size paper makes a microscopic fold, very tough on the paper (thank heavens for fingernails).

I like that the model is at least true to shape – knowing how the fold works now I would use a much bigger piece of paper should I fold this again as some of the detail is lost because of the thicknesses of the fold.

Still, boldly go, hey 🙂 You can have a go yourself: http://www.papierfalten.de/documents/faltanleitungen/bird_of_prey.pdf

100: Elias’s “Last Waltz” for Lindy and Randy’s Wedding

| wonko

Lindy and Randy get married today, which is actually yesterday (curse this linear time) and as a MILESTONE fold I thought I would attempt Neal Elias’s “Last Waltz”:Fittingly it is a bride and groom dancing at their wedding. there is much to love about this model – it WORKED first fold, contains 2 figures (joined at the hip) and they have a fairly natural posture, are both dressed formally (him in a suit and her in a meringue) and it is free standing.He has his hands on her shoulder and waist, she is reciprocating and the model withstands viewing from all angles.Made from a 3×1 rectangle cut from white wrapping paper (testing it out for a larger snake project later), when made with 2-sided paper he ends up a different colour to her – very clever indeed.

A joy to fold, another joy to attend Lindy and Randy’s wedding via UStream – hope this is a fitting wedding present.

99: A DNA Double Helix

| wonko

Talk about “life, the universe and everything”, this model is an intriguing exercise in pre-folding:

Organised ridges, counter folds of diagonals and the model seemed to curl in on itself in a magical sort of way. Interestingly it is composed of 42 base pairs – I wonder if that is a coincidence?

Folded from an A4 page, strangely, the resultant model is huge (as the reference stage suggests, but is has an inherent strength and rigidity that I found surprising.

You can try this one for yourself: http://erikdemaine.org/thok/dna41.html

95: Star Puff tesselations

| wonko

I am fairly new to box pleating and tessellated patterns but this one caught my eye and I had to try it:

Oddly, it works on 120 degree angles, so a hexagon is perfect as a starter. I would like to say it was all neat and went to plan, but the individual “triangle twists” are not as even as I would like (I put that down to having no idea what I was doing initially) – certainly they got better the more of them I completed:

I get the impression that the smaller the pleats, the more of the units fit, but the more complex the interaction between them so you get folded into fiddly corners. I quite like the triangle twist method, some pleasing shapes emerge from it.

You should give this a try – do not be frightened by the link, the instructor speaks English amidst the sea of German: star puff