316: Wasp!

| wonko

Now I started this model assuming I would keep folding until the paper failed – I could tell from the instructions that copy paper would not be ideal, but for shits and giggles I kept bending:

To my amazement, with some gentle coaxing and no little pressure on tough folds (15+ layers for body/wing bend) a delightful and menacing wasp emerged from the crumpled and teased paper.

This is Annibal Voyer’s “wasp” and she is a beauty – lovely textured 3d abdomen, shapely wings, intricate head and the requisite 6 legs, all from an A3 copy square – wow.

There is much to admire about this design – although forming the body was tough with such thick brittle paper, at no time did I see a step I could not attempt (even with some inaccuracies like the paper being not quite square it still worked).

This is very clever design and I will fold this model again. Busy day again so I needed to get this out of the way, really glad I chose this model tho as the result, as a first fold, is astonishing.

315: Lest We Forget

| wonko

Today was “Remembrance Day”, at 11 am on the 11th of the 11th, 2011 the nation stops to give thanks and praise to the fallen soldiers from all world wars:

This is Frances Ow’s “Star Medal” – a lovely paper decoration (made even lovelier by making it in metallic paper) that I thought was fitting as a tribute to the day and also to distribute to a bunch of WWI ‘Aces’ who meet semi-regularly to play an old school board game with vigor and passion.

The gold medal was awarded to the “ballsy-est” move in the game – a near suicidal strafe on enemy base, the rest of us got bronze. In retrospect I should have folded one in purple, or better still folded a “purple heart” as one of the pilots was severely under the weather. Made from a 2×1 rectangle, based on a hexagon, the collapse is elegant and pleasing, a masterful design.

I originally folded this a while back, holding off until today to publish (so sue me)

314: Snail on a Leaf

| wonko

Slow and steady wins the race, in theory at least:

This is Nicholas Terry’s “Snail on a Leaf”, a lovely model that from one sheet rends a quite shapely snail, foot, shell and feelers, and a veined leaf – neat.

Busy day, bit of a rush, you get that sometimes. I like this as a first fold, learnt something about the model along the way so if I should fold it again, the result would be smoother and a little neater I think.

313: Monkey with Symbols

| wonko

Action models that work and look reasonable are few and far between, this is an exception:

Diagrammed (yet not credited to any particular designer) in Origami USA collection, this delightful model is a monkey holding a small set of symbols.

By tweaking the handle up and down, whilst holding the body, the arms flail and clap the symbols together – very cute indeed.

This is a compound figure – that is it is comprised of two pieces of paper folded separately and then locked together at the end – clever design really.

Why a symbol monkey? Why not!

312: Gerboa

| wonko

Now in arid areas of Australia life is hard. Some animals never drink, some come out an night, some live underground – the gerboa does all these things and more:

Sometimes called the “Kangaroo rat” because of its rather splendid tail and hoppy back legs, it has always fascinated me.

When I saw this model I knew I would have to try it – copy paper, to be honest, is a terrible media for this but I soldiered on and am actually very happy with this as a first fold.

An ingenious use of the bird base, I will fold this again – it is poseable, has lots of character and the most lovely feet and tail – very clever design.

Celtic Cross Revisited

| wonko

When I first folded Tadashi Mori’s Celtic Cross I knew it would come in handy, being that it is a part of the symbology of my College:

My year 12s (well, I call them mine, they were the leaders in my tutor Group – a lovely bunch of chaps) had their last day of classes today so I thought it a good idea to mark the occasion with cards – naturally they would feature origami.

Hope they liked them.

311: Air Mail

| wonko

“Once upon a time, boys and girls, people used to use hand-held ink dispensing rods to make marks on flat sheets of manufactured plant fibre, fold them, place them inside an envelope of the same material, write a distant geospatial reference on one side, their own geospatial reference on the other. They would then pay for a coloured sticky icon and then hand this package over to a corporation that used to exist solely for the carrying and dispensing of such message envelopes” the old story teller said. The assembled children gasped in amusement, then vlogged about the experience collaboratively via the ether.

Snail mail, you remember that – I like the idea of air mail – this sort of letter has a Terry Pratchett, Discworld sort of feel to it.

Designed by Hojyo Takahashi, this delightful model is just what it says on the label.

Happy with this as a first fold.

310: Tutankhamum

| wonko

On the 4th of November 1922, almost by accident, a water carrier for Howard Carter stumbled across what looked like a step. They had all but given up hope of finding the legendary tomb of Tutankhamun but, on digging they discovered another, and another. By the 6th of November they had uncovered a sealed entrance to a tomb that bore the elusive cartouche of the boy king and so began one of the greatest archaeological discoveries of our time.

I admire an explorer that showed such great restraint – rather than rush is, as he was being urged to do, he covered up the entrance and went away, re-mounted an exploration mission 26 days later to actually open the tomb and painstakingly uncover and catalogue in-situ such wonderful things that belie imagination.

Having made a mask yesterday, I thought I would try another, and what better than a figurative representation of that famed gold and precious stone-inlayed death mask for the boy-king. I have seen this mask when it toured our city museum – it is breathtaking.

Scale was an issue here – it could have been made from an A4-cut square, but I could not tell how much was tucked away so made it from A3. I like that it hints at a snake in the headdress, the beard and overall proportions are nice. With time and a little patience I dare say you could fashion facial features – there is certainly enough paper there to do so.

Happy with this as a first fold – I could do a month of masks, there are lots of designs and a plethora of approaches to origami mask making – maybe that is for another day.

309: V for Vendetta

| wonko

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot…

As a kid I remember cracker night – well in truth, it was cracker week because you could buy fireworks and we used to spend the week blowing things up. In retrospect, all that messing around with gunpowder was really dangerous, but apart from some occasional superficial burns and the odd scorched letterbox we came to no real harm.

I am generally not a fan of Natalie Portman – the Star Wars prequels put me off a lot but she has been outstanding in a couple of subsequent movies – “Black Swan” and “V for Vendetta” for example. This is “V”, the psychopath in the Guy Fawkes mask and I am pretty happy with the result.

Designed by Brian Chan, it is an exercise in restraint, as you have a black/white paper and fold all the black inside, then, later, carefully reveal tiny hints of it – very clever design actually. you get eyes, a rather splendid nose, pencil moustache and goatee in a lovely mask shape, nice.

You can have a go for yourself – it is fairly easy and totally appropriate for Guy fawkes day

308: Carmen Sprung’s Kantenmodule

| wonko

I saw this modular and decided I wanted to try it:

Having no idea of scale, I initially used coloured squares cut from A4, but got the colour count wrong – notiing it was in 6 groups of 5, I mistakenly got 5 pages  each of 6 colours – dang.

I think the scale was a bit out – this thing turned out enormous – lovely but enormous. It is really strong, structurally – the multiple triangular cross section modules interlock really solidly and make for a nice shaped ball.

I toyed with the idea of doing this over a couple of days, but in the end I got really fast at folding the modules, and the construction process was really fast also – although it was a little tricksey ensuring the colours were distributed evenly.

Very happy with this model – it looks lovely and takes quite a striking photo also.

307: White Rabbits (belated)

| wonko

Now I know it is not the start of the month, and I missed out on the pinch and the punch because of a horsey thing, but thought I should get in on the act of start of month eventually:

A nice, compact and fairly poseable rabbit. Quite happy with this, although I seem to have misplaced my first fold (completed at school whilst I should have been paying attention to an all important rap battle).

I am looking for new rabbits to try, suggestions welcome.

This one looks more like a hare, but I like the ears and tail, well designed models can be simple and small too.

306: Wolf Alarm

| wonko

At 5:30am every morning, the dog next door explodes in a flurry of barking and howling – I call this our “wolf alarm”:

I think it is in response to an early morning walker on the street beyond, regardless it wakes me from my light sleep and I struggle to return after the wolf alarm has gone off.

This nice model from Roman Diaz is a “Coyote” howling at the moon, but I think it looks like the mutt next door (well, at least in my head it does). happy with this as a first fold, would do it differently if I were to fold it again as the forming of the muzzle is very congested and could be done before hand I think.

305: Melbourne Cup

| wonko

I have had the privilege to fold many beautifully designed models over the course of this project – David Brill’s “Horse” is right up there with the best:

Wonderful proportions, amazing use of material, lovely face and ears, fantastic body, legs and tail – everything that is needed to look horsey infact.

Today apparently a horse race stops a nation – not sure why. I guess the nation is used to being stopped given the recent airline strike but no one celebrated that so -go figure.

Unusually, this model starts with an equilateral triangle – yeah, weird, right? Somehow from that shaped paper the designer manages to tease the right number of stickey outy bits and I, frankly, feel honoured to fold this one. I cut the largest equilateral triangle I could our of an A2 sheet, but bigger would have been better.

There are lots of places where variations in pose are possible, had I the time (and a HUGE selection of paper) I think a group of these would look beautiful. So glad, as a first fold, this model turned out so nice, given the heavy head cold I am currently drowning in.

October, Done and Dusted

| wonko

What a massive month October has been:

During this month I explored the works of Neal Elias, paid tribute to Eric Joisel and much more. Lots of lovely things and a terrifying amount of time expended creating them.

Two months to go until the one-a-day pressure lets up.

304: Wicked Witch of the West

| wonko

Apparently some cultures celebrate halloween, although it is not really an Australian tradition (despite the efforts of the shops) I thought I would get in on the act myself:

This has taken an age – I want to pretend that this is my first fold but in truth this if my 5th, the FIRST to be successful however. Three times I got to step 85 and could not work out what to do before the paper disintegrated – grrrr.

This is, as you can see, quite a detailed model – crooked nose, crooked hat, plaits flying in the breeze, one hand gripping the broom another waving it’s fingers, lovely flowing robes, knobbly knees, shoes, the works.

A very dense model, the body has nearly 30 layers. This was the one I had planned before the radio station asked me to fold something on air – lol – not quite sure what I could have achieved in the 10 minutes elapsed in the interview but you get that.