Looking for something to de-stress and unwind to after a brutal term, I turned to “The Works of Satoshi Kamiya II”, and a model that I was astonished to find I had never tried – his hermit crab:
Starting with a 70cm square of natural/white Kraft paper, the fold was challenging as you allocate one side of the sheet to the crab, the other to the shell. Via a fabulous fold sequence, you tease legs, claws, antennae, eyes and mouthparts while delicately colour-changing the rear and then spiralling a shell as his home.
This is, (der), genius design – I always am amazed with Kamiya designs, and the elegance of the developmental sequence – as if the journey is every bit as delightful as the destination.
I am trying to get my brain back – the term has been brutal so I decided some paper therapy was in order. I originally folded this model back in 2011, on tiny paper, and the resultant mess was posted as part of that year’s 365 challenge.
I had vowed to re-fold it with better paper, and I decided to do that today.
I cut a 50cm of pearl coloured Lithography paper, and carefully followed an instruction set that only lasted 103 steps or so (quite quick for a Kamiya model).
I love how this horse seems to emerge from an otherwise non-descript tangle, with glorious and sensibly placed, appropriately muscled wings.
When a legend graciously shares hand-drawn diagrams for a lovely simple Eastern Dragon, one simply has to give it a go:
This is an “Eastern Dragon” – interestingly most people in the west believe you need to staple wings on such a critter so that it can fly. Our eastern cousins accept that this sort of critter can fly, wings are not necessary for this activity.
This design was recently shared, luscious hand-drawn diagrams from @brianchandesigns, a gracious and fabulous gift to the origami community.
My Mum had a large carpet snake take up residence atop her hot water system. Apparently he (she? who can tell?) was gentle, sleepy and knocked off some terracotta plant pots in his quest for a coil-spot:
Over a period of a couple of weeks, he moved about, basking, slithering and generally being a snek, then he buggered off (as they do).
A group of mates has, periodically over the last few decades, gotten together in a smoke-filled room to play a board game. Not any old game, but “Dogfight” – a dice-based, card controlled WW1 battle of the airspace over Europe.
Although most of the players were well passed their fifties, we squabbled like little kids, goaded each other fearlessly, preened and peacocked at our prowess and got nit-picky about the many nuances of rule variations hard won.
It was honestly some of the best fun to be had, and the chaps were good sports, one and all. In January, one of our quartet passed away. “Dr Winston O’Boogie” (Michael) flew off into the sunset for the last time to great fanfare.
We have met since, dragging a young buck into the fold, and played until Michael’s house (the home of our epic aerial battles) was finally sold.
Tonight is our last hurrah!
I have struggled to find a suitable way to celebrate such a wonderful partnership, but turned to Origami, as is my want. I wanted to fold BIPLANES for the original pilots, and a smaller plane for the new recruit, and have really struggled with these models. The Biplanes are designed by Marc Kirschenbaum. I wanted to fold them smaller but failed many times, only being able to manage them from 60cm squares (and not very tidily sadly) – red, naturally in honour of Von Richtoffen (or Snoopy, take your pick).
The smaller plane is “Avioneta” designed by Eduardo Clemente – a charming little fokker.
I hope the guys like them. I remain forever grateful for the opportunity to act like little kids when surrounded by the wonder and majesty of imagination, fun and friendship. Chocks away Chuck, fly true one and all.
I am a firm believer that people learn something important when they try to do something they are not good at. I have recently bought a Theremin, and I want to pretend that I am anything but not good at playing it, but, like, it is hard to master:
I noticed that a Theremin has a distinctive shape: an upright antenna that you use to control pitch (the high-lowness of a note), and a horizontal antenna loop you use to control volume. To my (not so great) surprise, I discovered that no one had yet done an origami model for this thing, so set about having a go.
I started with the fish base, long flap for the pitch antenna, long flap for the stand, then 2 shorter flaps become the volume loop. Some accordion pleating and the basic morphology is there. You can (I hope) see the development in the sequence below:
It is a start, I might try to refine it (add knobs, refine the antennae, etc). Happy with v1.
When I saw the folded form I thought there must be some trickery here:
All I had access to is the crease pattern (CP) for this model, and, given I am trying to develop my CP solving skills I thought it fair game to give it a try.
Based on a 16×16 grid, some strategic box pleating and an ingenious colour change we have a classic music stand, 3 shapely legs and a piece of sheet music that is a different colour to the stand – magic.
I like this model a lot – it just sort of coalesced in to a successful model for me, although the first fold was on paper that was same both sides but I could see the potential for colour change and had to fold it in duo paper,
There were 4 hours allocated for the teaching of “Dog”, we finished in about 3 so Satoshi decided to teach a simpler model that he said was the most “realistic cat” he knew – modelled after his own pet apparently:
A simple fold sequence, we have the back of a cat staring intensely away from us, just wonderful. I have seen other session attendee’s models where they added details to the front of the cat (when I re-fold this I may too).
Again, the sequence was fluid, and a joy to follow along with, interjected with banter and casual observations by the master – such a privilege to have been able to fold along.
The star drawcard (for me) was an opportunity to fold along live with Satoshi Kamiya – he taught 2 models and I managed to follow along with the broken English, translator and zoom limitations:
The sequence of most of Kamiya’s models are delicious – so natural, logical and a totally different/unique style.
This is a generic dog, different to the one most recently published and I can see how you could vary the base to get really nicely shaped dogs of many types – this one is a little “husky” like.
I really felt lucky to have been present, I am a bit of a fanboi, but it was intense and wonderful. Matching the master, fold for fold was a rare pribilege. I must re-fold this (as I am not really happy with the head I folded).
I attended the 2021 April OUSA Foldfest – a 25 hour online marathon of folding tutorials, lectures and virtual meet nd greet:
One of 2 deciding reasons to attend was the opportunity to be taught a model by Sipho Mabona – his “Geisha”.
At 3am, I awoke, made tea, cut some paper ready for the workshop (international time is cruel), and, thankfully followed alone a complex but beautiful sequence.
By pure coincidence, my paper looked like Sipho’s, and my final model is really close (amazing for a first fold, testament to the sequence and expert tutelage).
Mum had Basset hounds when we were kids – wondrously preposterous dogs with twice as much skin as any dog needs, rediculously long ears and a bark straight from the bowels of hell. We loved the “girls”; they were very intelligent, active and protective (and seemed to delight in sneaking up behind us and barking deeply once, for the effect – I am sure it amused them):
This model is as close to the actual basset hound shape as I have found folded from paper, and the colour changes make this model actually closely resemble one of our bassetts named “Cleo” – lovely dog. The stance is really typical and the placement/proportion of the ears and head are spot on.
Folded from white/natural duo Ikea Kraft, it is a challenging model because of a number of judgement fold steps and some tricky shaping, but i am happy with the result (and hope mum likes it, a gift for her).
I try not to let folds beat me, but honestly, until now this one has. I have attempted Eric Joisel’s ‘Le Coq” more that 6 times, this is really the only fold of it I am happy with:
Continuing to fold models that are part of a competition I was eliminated from is part of the motivation, but a “hidden” technique, published obscurely (not in my library) surfaced that allowed for a layered/ruffled breast and clarified the eye/comb and “bingo!”, I finally get it.
This model is folded from a 1m square of Officeworks Kraft paper, measures 20cm toe to comb, and is all attitude. One of our fondest memories of France was the bicycle tour to Giverny (Monet’s house) via Vernon. While in Vernon, looking for baguette and cider, we stumbled across a bric-a-brac store that had resin chooks – we fell in love with a rooster we subsequently bought, naming him “Vernon”.
Whilst being eliminated from the Origami Tournament, I am still interested in the models being folded by surviving contestants. This week’s challenge was Jang Yong Ik’s :Smilodon” – a “sabre tooth tiger” like critter from time gone past:
The fold sequence is intense – this model ate up a 70cm square of black/natural duo Kraft paper like few other models. The body is thick and heavy, some sections had dozens of layers.
I took my time, considered as I went, determined to succeed on my first fold. In retrospect, using thinner paper would have an advantage in that the layer management would be easier, but the legs would be flimsy and require wire supports – tough for a designer to distribute paper structurally.
In the end, we have a crouching toothy fossil, it was an interesting exercise and entrants did some good shaping to personalise their folds. I enjoyed exploring the sequence.
Francesco Massimo shared his design for a cutie little “Eastern Dragon” on social media, and I knew I had to try it:
Folded from a 35cm square of Daiso green Washi, this little critter comes in at about 17cm nose to tail tip – a very efficient design.
Fairly simple folding, lots of half fish bases and some accordion sinks to hide away most off the paper while still leaving flaps for legs, horns and head – clever designing.
This was a welcome distraction from marking and I will probably re-fold him using duo paper as there are clever colour changes exposing the belly and other details.
