It is a beautiful day, waters clear, the water beckons, it would be wrong not to go for a swim. You put your toe in, the water is lovely, swimming gives you a new found freedom:
This is part 1 of a 3 part story – what could possibly go wrong- we rarely see the danger, far off in the distance, and why would we consider it, we are ok, nothing could go wrong. Continue reading
There is always time to make a little peace in our world.
It takes incidents like those that unraveled yesterday to realise that peace is a choice we make as participants of the world on which we live. Continue reading
Roman Diaz is one of many talented Spanish origamists and with this model he captures something of the proud noble stallion:
there is much to like about this model – apart from it being a nifty use of the fish/camel base, the posture, proportions and attitude evident in the horse are present in this little model. He is also free-standing, on 3 legs, neato.
A slight mis-calculation in scale made this model really difficult to fold – the thickness of paper and tiny details made shaping a real challenge – I will fold this bigger because there is much model-ability here, truly clever design.
I got caught up in a much more complicated fold and completely forgot I had no fold for today, so searched the list of “must dos” and came up with this one. Happy with this as a first fold.
This is nuts, seriously NUTS. I started this model 2 weeks before exam block, and have been chipping away at it ever since:
This monolithic modular is Yoshino’s T-Rex Skeleton and I for one am totally impressed with the attention to design detail here. Firstly the overall proportions are correct – no mean feat as it is comprised of 21 A3-cut squares, each piece designed to slot together, each piece correct in relation to the others – wow.
If you carefully consider – the head is 2 pieces (top of skull and jaw), neck (snarly pleated sculpture) is 2 pieces, each arm/shoulder blade assembly is 1 piece, then the rib cage – 6 varying size/curvature ribs (1 piece each), pelvis (2 pieces), lovely long legs, bastard of a tail (5 segments, each took over an hour in itself).
I am really pleased with the result, and will probably work out a wire armature to run along the spine so it will stand. The school Science Department have expressed interest in displaying this beastie as I certainly have no where big enough – tail to nose it is over a metre long and nearly as high.
This has taken an age to fold – each piece was a complex model in itself and the instructions were only in Japanese – no useful annotations and annoyingly a different symbolism than is conventional to describe the steps – grrrr. I had to ask the Japanese Department to see if there were even any clues as to the suggested paper size of whether it was stated if the paper all had to be the same size – in the end I GUESSED it probably was.
Still, it worked, and wow, no I mean WOW – this guy is amazing.
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!
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
It is a little known fact that Australians MADE UP the Platypus to see who would be silly enought to believe in it:
Let’s face it – an aquatic, furry mammal that feeds it’s young milk in a pouch, after they hatch from eggs; duck-bill, webbed feet, beaver tail, “see” via electrical sonar through their nose; male with poisonous spines – LOL. No one would be sill enough to believe in that illogical Frankenstein-like collection of bits of other critters, surely.
I have only ever had second, or third-hand experience of a Platypus – NEVER seen one live so I have to rely on others’ account of them.
A relatively simple figurative fold – they cannot all be huge, quite happy with this – I can see large modelability in this figure. Could not work out who designed it, sorry – anyone advise?
I thought I would try something simpler, so found what looked like a mostly harmless little Llama model designed by Jim Adams:
On paper, this model was straight forward – in practice however the thickness of layers at the tail end made this model impossible to fold using copy paper (I tried, breaking one of my own rules, it exploded – well, split and the tail broke off, so I started again) so I used a square of tissue foil – even then the tail was too thick to be elegant, pity – the diagram makes it look crisp and slender. I guess if one used large format foil it might be easier – not sure the overall model proportions warrant that treatment however.
Some interesting applications of sink, crimp and double-rabbit ears – it suggested double rabbit-earing the rear legs – already needle thin, I merely reverse folded them and think that is a better result. Pity they are so thick else I would have added hooves also.
Although it is diagrammed as a Llama, I think it is more like an Alpaca (mostly because I wanted to use “an” in the title and “An Llama” does not seem right – yeah, I know, tissue thin reasoning there but you get that)
This is a cute action model, counter-balanced so it actually rocks back and forth:
It is supposed to be 2 children, opposite ends of a see-saw – a boy (wearing an Indian costume and feather) and a girl (in a bonnet) – use your imagination or some recreational chemicals and it is as clear as anything.
Designed by Fred Rohm, I folded this from “Secrets of Origami” by Robert Harbin, one of my oldest books – a simple model as I was brain-fried after a punishing term, hope you like it.
Participatory Origami reaches YOU. Go get an A4 sheet of paper NOW, here is a cracking model for you to try:
Continue reading
Looking for something simple for a change, I stumbled across this little stegosaurus:
There is much to like about this little fellow – plates across the back, head with enough paper (if the moder were bigger) to get eye expressions, and cutey little feet.
Built like a Sherman tank, these guys sadly had a brain the size of a walnut – I know that feeling sometimes.
You can have a go at this one also: stegosaurus
