M Yamaguchi

1158: Wilhelmina the Wyvern

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Flipping through Makoto Yamaguchi’s “Origami Dragons Premium”, as one does, I stumbled across a lovely Wyvern, designed by Chuya Miyamoto:

Digging through my paper stash I found the perfect sheet for this model, a purple spotty Do paper that was part of a prize I won from Phạm Hoàng Tuấn’s Vietnamese origami paper shop pre-pandemic, so decided to give it a whirl.

My philosophy when approaching a super-complex origami design is based around “fuck around and find out” or more politely “fold until I finish or it fails”, and this model was a real treat.

A truly great design and fold sequence takes into account the material, not overly stressing it, managing accumulating layers and locking things together to keep things tidy. This design was so satisfying to fold, and in combination with the paper choice the resultant model is stunning.

Continue reading →

917: Triangular Mouse

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It is a little known fact that mice used to originally be triangular – the closer to a right angle triangle, the more genetically successful apparently*:

This charming model is designed by Makoto Yamaguchi, a quirky fold that I found when browsing Tanteidan 106. Continue reading →

653: (103/365) Stretching Cat

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As any cat owner knows, cats seem to be able to tie themselves in knots, and this pose is fairly typical of a stretch pose:

Well, I say cat “owners” but in reality, cats own and train us to serve them, it is in the nature of cats really. Continue reading →

553: (3/365) Yamaguchi’s Giant Panda

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Apparently Pandas are endangered – seems they have lost their mojo (or are perhaps shy and do not like being observed so closely by people):

This is Makoto Yamaguchi’s Giant Panda – a lovely 2 part model made for bi-colour origami paper, folded from one of my Tanteidan Magazines. In deciding whether I would attempt another 365, I began looking through my stack of JOAS and BOS magazines and found dozens of un-attempted models – that sort of greenlighted the project to an extent. Continue reading →