Went to lunch with some friends from Uni yesterday, wonderful to catch up.
Teresa gave me a present, it was a “because I saw it and it remined me of you” gift – so wonderful:
A china crane, persistent homage to the 1000 Cranes for Peace project I completed earlier in the year for Hiroshima Day.
The designer has been faithful to the actual origami model – such loving detail, proportions, nice. Love it to bits – many thanks.
Now most who know me know that I am up for a challenge and when I saw this one I knew I had to give it a go:
90 pieces of paper (60 small and 30 long) individually folded and locked together, no glue make an astonishing lump of awesomeness:
This has taken me AGES – folded over a the course of last week, the last two prisms were added today and we have this lovely thing. Designed by Daniel Kwan, based in part of a Francis Ow unit, the angles necessary to make a pentagon are tricksey.
The tab and pocket construction technique is, in theory, really simple but when the model has 3 simultaneous tabs (for any vertex) keeping them all in before locking them was really fiddly and resulted in much swearing. As the model got more and more crowded the problems increased to the point where I nearly gave up, having mangled a set of tabs so badly they were not going to insert, requiring a refold.
Very satisfying to finally finish – there is a lovely symmetry with this model – pentagonal swirls framed by pentagons. I think my term 3 modular is cool – hope you like it also.
Want to make it? Download my intersectingPentagularPrismsPattern and print it on an A3 page, cut out the shapes and get bending – tab A goes into slot B etc. Originally this was designed to be made from STARBURST lolly wrappers but I scaled them up to be double that to make it easier. Achievable with copy paper, probably much easier with a different colour for each prism in retrospect.
Little Red was off to visit Kit:
Oh Jake, what big eyes you have, what big ears you have, what big teeth you have…
These are revisits of Stephen Weiss’ “Girl in a dress” and Kade Chan’s “Werewolf” for Kit and Jake.
Lunch with friends, nice. Lunch with friends and their kids, even nicer 🙂
Barbz asked me to make a deer, I decided to look for a stag (antlers etc) and found one by Neal Elias:
I like this model – out of a severe box pleat a fairly graceful body, legs and head with lovely ears and antlers emerges.
This was a tough fold – the thicknesses near the nead are really difficult to fold, but the result is quite satisfying as a forst fold – hope you ike it Barbz.
I have also found a bunch of deer-like animals, will experiment more with the form.
When I think of my mate Mike, I think of Rodin’s “The Thinker”:
There are many reasons, including his stunning good looks, poise but most of all because he is a thinker – he considers everything deeply, his responses are considered, balanced, always truthful and often factual 😛
This is a Neal Elias designed model, interesting use of an off-centre waterbomb base and trademark elias stretches to make the arms, I think it is particularly clever that the pose is fairly accurate, it is self-standing (well, ok, sitting), complete with all the body bits and perched on a pedistal to finish.
This is the second model I have folded from “Neal Elias – Selected Works 1964-1973” compiled by Dave Venables, purchased through the British Origami Society. As a founder in the box-pleating techniques that have been more popular in recent years, the shape is figurative yet evokes the object it was mimicking well I think.
I Think, therefore .. umm … what was the question?
Exploring the wealth of designs Akira Yoshizawa left us with, I sumbled across this delightful snail:
Simple yet the very essence of the critter – much modelling potential also, as the shell could be coiled, the foot textured etc.
Sometimes simple is necessary – busy day, lots of other folding going on, you get that.
Akira Yoshizawa continues to surprise and delight – his folds are simple, elegant and have much modelling potential:
This is one of a series of person studies, and is a novel use of the frog base.
Busy day, lots to do, much being put off, you get that.
I have never been able to discern the difference between a tortoise and a turtle:
Sure there are superficial morphological differences but they both are reptiles, both carry their shell around etc.
This is Robert Lang’s turtle and it is a lovely, simple, figurative model that abounds tortoisness. I like the simple curve of the shell, the hint of claws and the expressive neck/head.
I deliberately folded this small scale for two reasons – (1) I used to have a “penny turtle” called, sadly enough, “Myrtle” – I actually found her in a creek near home (I grew up in Maleny); (2) shits and giggles – you get that.
Slow and steady wins the race is where I was going here – hare and tortoise/turtle/whatever – so much to do, so little time, procrastinator set on full and we are away.
For me, September 11 2001 was the day the world lost it, in a big way. Senseless acts of violence were met with years of senselessly violent retaliation and witch-hunts, government sanctioned genocide and publicly celebrated religious fanaticism. There were no winners – we as a species did little to justify our position atop the food chain:
A symbol of peace in the origami community is the crane, there is a branch of the craft that looks to incorporate cranes into other models. this intricate and often torturous craft can result in some stunningly complicated folding – this one by Jeremy Shafer is called “The Star of Peace”.
Using a technique termed “isolating squares”, you reserve unfolded squares and crumple all else out of the way and in this care we end up with a 3d star with a ring of 4 cranes flying around the top layer. The container is waterproof (like a fancy waterbomb).
I fold this with mixed emotions – the media has so skewed the events leading up to and after 9/11 that it leaves me with an even stronger resolve against war, military action and religion … you get that. I live in hope that the human spirit continues to emerge from the morass, looking for ways to help, positive actions that build the dignity of people and erase the artificial barriers of race, creed and sect.
Imagine there’s no heaven, it’s easy if you try
No people below us, above it’s only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for todayImagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do
No need to kill or die for and no religions too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peaceYou may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as oneImagine no possessions I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger a brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing for the worldYou may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as oneYou may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
Take my hand and join us
And the world will live, will live as one
John Lennon, “Imagine”.
On September 9, 2001, a virtual environment called TerraMOO was first launched.
An intersting date given a couple of days later the WORLD changed forever. terraMOO is an Encore-based MOO, it has run continuously for the past 10 years, even though boys have constantly tried to break it – name another technology that can come close?
As a learning environment I believe it is unequaled, providing chat rooms, object-oriented programming, web publishing, online interactive assessment and smart objects there is nothing that comes close.
Yes, I have played and developed in 3d worlds, yes I understand their potential also, but a MOO is unique – long may she run.
This cow I have been saving, the folding was intense but the end cow-shape is most pleasing – lovely ears, horns and a serene facial expression, good body proportions and a lovely swishy tail.
I liked this modular when I first saw it and knew that it would look wonderful in colour:
An interesting elbow bend, tubular construction and odd folding in fifths make this model interesting to make
You start with a split A4 page, box pleat and lock the tube, then slide one inside the other to make a rectangular hoopy thing, then nest another inside that one, then lock a third over the top of that one and you end up with a lovely sort of impossible looking shape
I like this a lot, the illusion of intersecting shapes in well designed and although a little time consuming it is satisfying and a keeper I think.
Now in my quest to fold 365 models, one a day for a whole year, it seems like I have been doing this forever already. Not having an infinite amount of time, I thought I wold fold an INFINITY in paper:
this is a rather ingenious pair of interlocking rings, the whole of which (hole … a ring joke there, lol) was folded from a single square, no cuts, no glue.
This ingenious fold is from Jeremy Shafers book “Origami to Astonish and Amuse” and is the first step towards achieving a snarly fold that features EIGHT rings (again, from ONE piece of paper)
A lovely accordion fold and some tidy end pleating and presto, an infinity symbol which I think is splendid. Even the wife did not believe it was only one sheet until I unfolded it and proved it was.
This week is designated “Child Protection Week” so I looked for a model that was for me the essence of the message:
Education is where I went – kids educated by older people is one of the best forms of protection around and this group of figures shows the careing and respectful relationship betwixt teacher and student to me.
I like how the elder teacher is balding (but in denial as he has comb-over side tusts of hair on an otherwise bald head), the student looks up hopeful from a book for guidance – just wonderful.
Folded based on a David Brill pair “Gippetto and Pinocchio” from the aptly named “Brillian Origami” book, I like this grouping and hope you do to. The teacher is folded from a 2×1 and the student from a 2×1 that is 3/4 the size of the teacher. The book is a Brill book also (a spelling book, that only has 3 pages between a lovely bound cover), adding to the scene I think – the student’s hands looked empty without it.
Some lovely figurative folding, suggesting detail without folding every last nose-hair of it; the teacher’s head is a staggeringly complex box pleating trick and the student features a torturous collapse, but overall I can see the models are related, their bases were similar and the folding style of one compliments the other nicely I think.
Davor Vinco has made many elegant models, most with simple lines – I particularly like his fish:
The beautiful eyes have featured on an earlier model but I like the body shape of this fish, the way the fins lock and gill line makes the nead a different colour to the body (if using duo colour paper)
A fairly simple fold to give my tired hands a rest from yesterday, nice none the less – 3d enough to consider filleting.
It is child protection week so I must chase some design for that.
Now yes, I will be the first to admit this is NUTS!:
But you only know half of it – this is my SECOND centipede folded today – you see I learned a general principle: how to tease legs out of a straight edge, and I got … a little … carried away. I should have been taken away for doing this twice in one day – 2 HOURS each creepy crawley, and some sore hands to finish with but it was so totally worth it – hahahaha.
This model is based on Peter Engel’s Centipede, although I found many of the steps incomprehensible so sort of “improvised” and I think it is rather special – ONE piece of paper, 32 (yes, that is right THIRTY TWO!!!) legs, a rather splendid mandible and antennae and some of them stickey-outey-tail-things they have.
Folding on this scale is crazy (thank goodness for fingernails) – the problem is finding a piece of paper LARGE enough to make this model not torture (both times I failed, cutting the largest 4×1 I could out of an A3 sheet). At this scale the feet are very difficult to fold with fat clumsy fingers, and it was a days work just to stop the paper tearing. Just for the record, NEITHER centipede suffered paper fatigue, splits or tears – that in itself is a miracle.
The technique is extensible, and, given longer pieces of paper I can make more legs – very nifty trick that I will remember as any straight edge now is a candidate for a row of stickey outey things.
