2hrs

Kangaroo

| wonko

As part of an Aussie animal series, it would be wrong to not include a Kangaroo:

The best Origami Kangaroos are designed by Gen Hagiwara – this is Gen’s 2013 design, a lovely mother ‘roo with a joey in her pouch. Fortunately it featured in Tanteidan Magazine #147 – part of my growing collection of JOAS origami magazines.

Starting with a 50cm square of rust Lokta paper – a Nepalese paper made from the inner bark of a species of Daphne, a remarkably durable paper that has natural resistance to bugs, mildew etc.

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1152: Platypus

| wonko

Browsing a Korean Origami Convention book (the 6th – 2015), as you do, I stumbled across a Platypus I had not seen before:

Designed by Fernando Gilgado, this genius design uses duo paper to isolate the beak, tail and legs from the body in a really interesting way.

After some simple pre-creasing, you collapse to a base that looks really useful for all sorts of long critters with head/tail and 2 pairs of legs (like a crocodile, say)

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1148: Flying Dragon

| wonko

Wrapping up an editing spot on a forthcoming new book, I decided to fold Tu Kaiming’s design for a Flying Western Dragon:

It is rare to see a dragon posed mid-flight, and I like the approach taken here.

Oddly, it is usually westerners that think dragons need wings to fly – but they bring a dynamism that it is difficult to achieve without them. I also like the styling (ribs and other details) – the ribs remind me of the Xenomorph I just finished also – a nice detail. The head is simple, horns suggested – a nice balance of form and function.

Using a 50cm square of rust-coloured Satogami (my first sheet from a paper pack I got from Origami-shop.com) the base creases are easy but the model escalates pretty quickly to become a tight bundle. The Satogami took the contortions and flex tension pretty well (even during a dense “turn this part inside out as a complex reverse-fold sink). Satogami is a heavy paper with an interesting subtle texture – I must use it some more.

It is clear that Origami is currently experiencing a Renaissance – so many new designs emerging from everywhere, it is also wonderful that we are getting to see new designs from all over the world.

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1126: Matt LaBoone’s “Chinese Dragon”

| wonko

Matt shared a 2015 design on Fakebook recently, so I decided that given it is nearly Chinese New YEar, and it is a “Year of the Dragon”, folding a dragon I had not yet attempted was a good idea:

This dragon, in structure, is similar to Kamiya’s Ryujin 1.2 (in sheet layout at least), but does some interesting things with the body and tail that were fun to fold.

Initially I tried it with a sheet of Yukogami, and abandoned it before I managed to get to the base because it was just too thick. I resorted to a nice crispy thin 55cm square of Kraft (I should have test folded it first anyways – doh!).

I added a wire armature and did a swirly pose, raised a front foot and had the opposite foot mid-step, it is a little cute.

Chinese dragons differ from the Western tradition by not needing wings to fly – they are way more “serpentine” as opposed to scaley bird or scary bat.

1105: En Garde

| wonko

It is a wonderful thing when designers share their processes, crease patterns and diagrams. Boice Wong is one that readily shares the CPs of his amazing designs, and when I saw “Sword and Shield V2”, I knew I had to give it a go:

Although I have been folding for decades, most of what i have folded has been from DIAGRAMS (step by step folding guides). By far the MAJORITY of origami out there does not exist as diagrams, but a larger proportion exist as CPs (crease patterns). I have been, over the last few years, working on my crease pattern solving skills.

This model is based on Boice’s 24 grid CP, and the collapse is relatively straight forward. Sometimes CPs give you crease orientations (red=mountain, blue=valley), sometimes not. The skill comes with deciding which creases to impose first as part of the collapse. Sometimes it does not matter, most it does, some you can derive based on “knock on effects” on one crease that causes the orientation of a sequence of subsequent creases. Sometimes it is pure witchcraft.

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1090: Kusudama Ball

| wonko

Stumbling through my socials, I noticed a video tutorial of a reverse-engineered model originally designed by Ekaterina Lukasheva and knew I needed to try it:

kusudama ball

This 30 unit modular ball is a lovely bit of engineering, you make a bow-tie shaped unit and then, via a series of really positive locked tabs in pockets you form groups of 3 units that swirl around 5-unit shaped holes.

I chose Tuttle indigo dye duo paper and split each sheet into 4 squares, meaning the units were small but manageable. Construction was fairly easy – the units lock together fairly well but during construction the whole structure is really floppy. It is not until you have a near sphere that the paper tension kicks in and stabilises the shape – the final unit pulls the sphere round.

kusudama units

The Tuttle paper was a little thin, structure-wise, but folding this from thicker paper would begin to compromise the accuracy of the folding, making it less spherical – an interesting balancing act.

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1084: Square Spaceness

| wonko

I have a huge pile of “must get around to folding this” models and “Square Spaceness” designed by Alessandra Lamio is one of this legion:

1084: Square Spaceness - plan view

Take a square, divide it into a 16×16 grid, lay in strategic mountain and valleys and you get this almost Escher-like tessellation molecule (meaning you _could_ put multiples of these if you had a more expansive grid with some tweaks and a bit of smush).

Charged with the confidence Advent of Tess gave me, I knew it was time to give this a whirl. There are many long slight diagonal valleys that make up the bulk of the geometry for the inward sloping spirals, and the corner widget is ingenious as a lock, and adjusting the outside pleats lets it sit flat – love it.

1084: Square Spaceness - diamond view
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1074: Little Dragon

| wonko

One of the things I am doing more and more is being involved in the editing of pre-publish origami books. I was approached by Peter Buchan-Symons on his forthcoming book “Fantasy Origami”:

Peter Buchan-Symons' "Little Dragon"

I have folded many of his models testing as I check sequences, but seriously love this little guy – such a clever use of paper.

I folded this little dragon on a 21cm duo Tuttle print (although it is suggested that the first fold should be 25cm+) and the sequence is wonderful, complex and exacting.

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1071: 1st Stellation of the Rhombic dodecahedron (Escher’s Solid)

| wonko

I was invited to a “fold along” on Fakebook live by Fergus Currie, a multi-talented origamist with a penchant for geometric solids, I was free, and thought “why not”:

Ferdus Currie's 1st stellation of the Rhombic dodecahedron (Escher’s Solid)

Fergus demonstrated the folding sequences for 2 models taken from M.C. Escher’s “Waterfall” Lithograph, this one is the 1st stellation of the Rhombic dodecahedron (Escher’s Solid) – a remarkable 12-pointed solid with each unit being a slightly deformed pyramid.

unit folding

We started with unit folding, then moved on to construction techniques – a fun modular, in Fergus’ style of folding the entire vertex as a single unit, based on a template to geometrically construct the correct angles – neat stuff.

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1068: Russian Lilac Module

| wonko

I stumbled across the instructions for a glorious checkerboard kusudama designed by Andrey Ermakov, an insanely talented designer from Russia:

Russian Lilac unit designed by Andrey Ermakov
Russian Lilac unit

I decided to try and make ONE module – an exhausting process that starts with a HEXAGON initially divided into a 16 grid, then you dance through moves that flash and hide the reverse colour of the paper until you get this lovely pattern. This took me in excess of 2 hours!!! For ONE unit!!!!! You then crenelate and interweave them to make a spikey ball, tucking in tips to complete the tessellated surfaces.

Russian Lilac shaped to allow others to interlock.

Had I no life, and a LOT of paper, I would consider making all 30(!?!?!?!) of these things necessary to make the most complex spikey ball there is – a beauty that is not within my reach (for now) due to time pressures.

It is a timely reminder that astonishing and beautiful things come from Russia; ugly political and military action does not diminish this fact.

1058: Twister A

| wonko

Clocking on for another round of procrastigami, I decided to give the first of the “twister” series a go:

Twister A by Ilan Garibi - 2x2 molecules
Twister A – 2×2 molecules

This is “Twister A”, designed by Ilan Garibi, a lovely dimensional fold with a final twist to finish it off.

I have folded a few square twists, this one perches a twist on top of the intersection of opposing ridges, contains remarkably few folds on top of the base square grid.

Twister A by Ilan Garibi - molecule
Twister A Single Molecule

The basic molecule tiles awkwardly – because of the directionality (it forms in a clockwise direction) of the molecule, you have to reverse adjacent molecules if you want them to line up.

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1057: In ‘da ‘Hood

| wonko

Exploring Ilan Garibi’s lovely book “Origami Tessellations for Everybody”, the next “family” of folds starts off with “Childhood” and then evolves into more of the same:

childhood evolved
Childhood-Evolved (4×4 molecules)

This is almost a corrugation, as there are nearly no layers overlaying others – the surface treatment is deliciously dimensional, and the distortions are caused by paper tension and torsion of the underlying square-twists.

Childhood Molecule
“Childhood” molecule

I started with standard cotton-based photocopy paper (which for me is a LOT like thin Elephant Hide) and laid in a square grid. Both childhood and childhood-evolved use off divisions. I folded a regular division (halves or thirds), then halved until I was close to the required grid sizes, then sliced off unneeded units before laying in the wedge-shaped mountain creases.

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1051: Rhombic Triacontahedron

| wonko

Origami designer Fergus Curry shared with me the diagrams for his Rhombic Triacontahedon, I was determined to give it a try:

Rhombic Triacontahedron

30 squares in 5 colours, some clever unit folding later and I had the bits needed to construct this little gem. A positive tab-pocket mechanism, some strategic placement of colours and pretty soon you have a lovely sphere made of rhombi. [edit]: A friend (JZag) pointed out this is a D30 (DnD reference there) – nice and nerdy.

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1046: Jeannine Mosely’s “Woven Stella Octangula”

| wonko

Jeannine Mosely is a legend in the modular origami world, and her early morning session was one I hoped to be awake enough to follow:

Jeannine Mosely's "Woven Stella Octangula"

This nightmare of a model has 12 modules (4 colours, 3 sheets each), and the actual module is really simple (based primarily on a 60 degree corrugation through a fan fold on a 1: root 3 sized paper).

Part of the session was devoted to a neato method of cutting a square down to the correct proportions, a small time in folding the module and the balance in construction, which is a bit of a mind-fuck.

Once you “get” the interleaving, it sort of makes sense, but the shape is not stable until the last colour goes in, making construction really fiddly.

Jeannine Mosely's "Woven Stella Octangula"

The resultant model is wonderful, and I know I will fold it again (I might choose nicer colours, and perhaps make it a little bigger). Jeannine’s instructions were clear and she has a good common sense presentation style.

1044: Geisha

| wonko

I attended the 2021 April OUSA Foldfest – a 25 hour online marathon of folding tutorials, lectures and virtual meet nd greet:

Sipho Mabona's Geisha

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).

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