Few modern origamists are as prolific and inventive as Jeremy Shafer – he seems to be creating new models constantly, and most importantly, his designs are fun to fold:
This is his Pyramid Tessellation field – each molecule has pre-creases that have easy landmarks, meaning you could expand this field in any direction as far as you have patience for.
This version is a 4×4 field of 16 separate square-based pyramids – a lovely thing in itself but when you start playing with it it starts to do wonderfully weird things.
Using just the existing creases, the model flexes diagonally and also horizontally/vertically. When you flex it diagonally it turns in on itself and COLLAPSES down to a hexagonal stack – this initially broke my brain until I noticed the pre-creasing actually formed pyramidal faces that are equilateral triangles – the collapse then is just one state it can be arranged into.
30 unit modulars exist in many forms, permutations and complications, few rival “Russian Lilac” for sheer time-consuming brutality:
Designed by Andrey Ermakov, this astonishing spikey ball has been quite a journey. I first added it to my “to fold” pile for a few years now, and then narrowly missed folding it as part of the IOIO (Internet Origami Olympiad) in 2021 – it was the nightmare round 2 task (I was knocked out in round 1).
The FIRST hurdle for folding this is the need to create 30 perfect regular hexagons that are all the same size (I created a few extra just in case shit went sideways). To do this, I cleaved a 2.1:1 rectangle from a 70cm wide roll of white/natural Kraft paper. Using 47 construction lines to form a regular TRIANGLE GRID on this page, I was then able to isolate 35 adjacent hexagons, which I then cut out carefully (scissors warning!!!).
Each hexagon then receives a 16 grid in all 3 axes, then 4 extra pre-creases before you begin unit folding. This totaled 1470 pre-creasing. Having bailed near the end of this year’s “Advent of Tessellations”, determined to return to it after some distance, I am not sure why i then bounced to another triangle grid on hexagon marathon project – I am guessing the time with my counsellor will eventually surface the reasons for the self-inflicted PTSD 😛
To form each unit, each hexagon then goes through 79 processes – all up each unit took me just over an hour each.
The main premise behind “2d colour-change origami” models (of which the flattened unit is one) is that you strategically utilise the edges of the sheet so you can reveal both sides of the paper along it by some clever flanges and flipping. The GENIUS of this model is that we use colour change to (when assembled) establish a colour-change triangle checkerboard across ALL outer faces of the finished polygon. Sadly each little triangle is not SEAMLESS – most are but not all, but based on my experience folding Daniel Brown’s seamless chessboards, I know this provision makes the design infinitely harder.
With so much going on, sometimes I need a fold I can lose myself in. One of many origami designers in my “GOAT” list was Eric Joisel. I have folded lots of his models, and often return to them – deceptively simple, terrifyingly technical, breathtakingly artistic.
As a sculptor turned Origami enthusiastic, his designs were “breathed into life” by the hands of a master – I would love to have even a fraction of his creative genius.
I have folded Joisel’s snail a few times before. Indeed, immediately prior to this version I folded a version of the fold, but hated the proportions, lack of head and impossible to balance fall-apart shell.
Re-thinking my approach, I attacked a 3.8×0.15m strip of 60gsm Kraft paper differently. I allocated space for the head – top and bottom separated by box-pleated feelers/eyes, leaving enough for a tail. The previous attempt started with the shell and that created issues as I had insufficient paper to properly form a head.
Having folded Robert Lang’s masterpiece Cactus, when I saw Daniel Brown had designed a smaller version based on a 31 square grid, I knew I would be folding that sometime:
I have been really into time-consuming surface deformations, corrugations and tessellations lately – whether it is procrastigami or the need for a time-sponge, pushing paper into amazing regular shapes is just fascinating to me.
I threw a 50cm square of glossy duo green/natural Damul Kraft paper from origami-shop.com at this design, but the resultant fold is tiny – few tessellations eat paper like this one. The rows of prickles are raised via overlapping pleats in an astonishing collection of cooperating maneuvers where accuracy and thickness is everything.
My previous fold was rendered from a 90cm square of Kraft that I painted after it was folded. The thickness make point sharpening really challenging. This fold using Damul Kraft made the fold much easier because the paper was thin and tough. The scale of the fold here is also smaller – a real challenge for my nerve-damaged and clumsy fingers.
Grinding through my “must fold” pile, I decided to work on the modular “Taj Mahal” designed by Valentina Minayeva:
I am a member of PAQ (Papermakers and Artists QLD) and this month’s meeting was all about “working with colour” – as I am not really into painting, stitching and similar, the closest I get to colourful “collage” is multi-colour kusudamas, and this is a beauty.
A relatively simple bi-colour unit combines with adjacent units to make some fascinating emergent geometry – we see colour wheel points, and tri-colour cubes emerge from the tangle in fascinating and delicious ways.
Unlike many kusudamas, this one has a relatively simple unit locking mechanism – the tabs positively lock into the pockets – the REAL challenge is colour distribution.
I decided on 5 colours (because it is a 5’s and 3’s type construction (5 units connect to make a swirl of a point, and adjacent modules dock in 3s). So I needed 6 sheets of each of the 5 colours to make a total of 30 units. The first swirl dictated EVERY other placement, as the next unit to add is the colour of the one on the opposite side of the structure. Once I saw that, it was a bit of a 3d jigsaw puzzle from hell, but satisfying.
My feeds are full of origami – mine and others – one origami artist that consistently pops up on my insta suggestions is @D.Hinklay:
I was drawn to his columnar corrugations, particularly “Prop 4” and “Prop 2” – they reminded me a lot of works of Huffman, Resch and many other origami legends, so decided I wanted to try them.
I committed a large sheet of duo Kraft paper, laid in a mountain-fold grid, strategically added zig-zags of valley folds, then began orienting folds.
The corrugation, like some fun folds, is an “all at once” collapse as you bend the sheet into a column – the creases then reinforce each other in very pleasing ways.
Eric Joisel was a genius – his sense of fun and play was amplified by his seemingly accidental discoveries. He typified himself as a “bad folder”, but no one breathed life into paper quite like him. When cleaning out my display case, I chanced upon an ancient and beleaguered fold of an “adult” hedgehog, based on Joisel’s iconic design, and decided to fold a replacement:
Looking through notes Eric himself left about the “Baby Hedgehog”, I discovered his “design” was really an algorithm – do it on a 16 grid and you get a baby, do it on a 32 grid and you get an adult – it is an algorithm because the method of raising a quill is repeated along a row. The method of adding another rank of quills is the same. Baby hedgehogs have 5 ranks of quills, an adult had 9. The leg formation, head and tail formation on both models is the same … the instructions are algorithmic.
I set about using some of a red roll I bought off Amazon (for something else, then changed my mind) – it is a scant 60cm square. It is red both sides, and takes folds quite well. You lay a 16 grid or alternate mountain/valley folds. then Diagonal grids alternating mountain and valley – this has the side-effect of, mostly, orienting all the creases you need for the base correctly. Nice.
The first rank of quills to set is the middle line. You lay as many pre-rank pleats as the model dictates before forming the first row of quills, then, it is a simple zig zag squash/collapse. Raising subsequent ranks all use the same method – popping points by liberating an internal pleat and reversing a point that is hugging the previous line of quills.
I remember being bamboozled by the collapse back when I first did it over a decade ago, but with experience you can see the process, anticipate what needs to mode and achieve each point without stressing the surrounding paper- very satisfying. Once all ranks of quills are raised, the side fans are box-pleated in half to form front/back legs. You then do something Joisel terms “True 3D”, where the body is curved via gentle stretching of the points – this subtly alters the inner gussets and locks the body in a domed shape – it takes time and a gentle tough not to distort and damage the paper – the effect is lovely however.
The masters of 2D side-on imagery, Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphics and associated artefacts have always fascinated me:
This is Peter Bucan-Symons’ design, represented as a 2D colour change model (a genre that has had a recent surge of popularity), and folded from a 25cm square of Green/Gold Washi Deluxe.
This design is part of Peter’s forthcoming book “Folding Fantasy 3”, a collection of stunning complex original works, coming soon to a bookstore online.
I have not folded many 2D colour change models, but love the angular geometry, truly reminiscent of all artefact representations. The Eye of Horus is a left eye in a pair of Wedjat eyes. The right eye is the Eye of Ra, and often in modern illustration presented mirrored, curiously.
This was a fun sequence, and would be easier on larger thinner paper. I found the pre-creasing folds on the Washi Deluxe disappeared, so it was harder than it would be on less textured paper.
I have always found ancient Egyptian symbology and art fascinating. Their attention to high graphic detail, the use of natural elements in depictions of deities, the use of gold and gemstones sublime. When I first saw the diagrams for Peter Bucan-Symons astonishing “Scarab Amulet”, I knew I needed to fold it.
From his forthcoming book “Folding Fantasy 3”, it is one of the many stand-out designs that are so terrifyingly complicated but so enticing. As part of his edit team, I also had the rare privilege of test-folding it before it has reached “the wild” as it were.
From a single 90cm square of Kraft (I keep a 90cm and a 60cm roll of Kraft in my stash all the time, they are my goto test-fold papers), via initial hex-pleat pre-creasing, we fold a many-lobed base that is then thinned, subdivided and refined to isolate, skillfully, all the necessary stickey-outey flaps in the right places.
Designing said bases is complex (at the moment beyond my feeble brain), but I like how PBS takes the time in this book to explain his methodologies, requirements and compromises for a whole bunch of the models in the book – a fantastic reference volume indeed.
Once all the flaps were isolated, the process of refining (thinning and shaping) them could begin. With so many required points, the layers really add up – managing that thickness is a real achievement. Thinner paper would help – indeed I am sure there are folders out there way more nimble fingered than me who could take it smaller, but you would need to really consider the paper choice here. Paper needs to be thin and tough (there is a LOT of sinking), it must also allow you to reverse folds cleanly (unlike a lot of laminated papers and foils that leave bunched up “kinks” when you reverse the direction of a fold).
If you have been paying attention, you would know i am a member of PAQ – Papermakers and Artists of Queensland. in 2025 we are mounting an exhibition that explores contemporary interpretations of the scroll, entitled “On a Roll”. I decided that I wanted to mount a FOLDED scroll as one of my submissions, and envisaged a massive tessellation:
I needed a theme, and a style. For a theme, I decided to try and “tell” the progression of the first year of the recent Covid-19 pandemic … because I could see a sequence of “blossoming” outbreaks that progressively “break” regular society.
The style choice was more complex – I love the aesthetic of Lacquerware – the Chinese/Japanese technique of covering simple materials in coatings of red lacquer, texture and patterns. I also wanted to have hints of “Kintsugi” – the Japanese technique of fixing broken pottery using lacquer and gold.
I chose red/natural Kraft paper because the red reminded me of the lacquer aesthetic, and the natural grounds the work in a common/everyday material. I selectively also introduced gilded elements into the finished folded work – symbolising the “patching” of the broken world – I went for a really minimal touch here, arguing less is more. Read further….
As a palette cleanser in-between gallery projects, I turned to my “must fold” pile and decided to have a crack at PRWorigami’s “Artichoke” Kusudama:
Vaguely resembling Xander Perrott’s “Conglomerate” in overall model morphology, the two designs are really different. “Artichoke” has deepish pockets and tabs, with friction locks whereas Xander’s has much more positive locking – multiple locks per unit.
The folding sequence relies a lot on alignment, making the risk of inaccuracies pretty high – certainly I got better at consistently folding angles as the unit production line progressed, but the points here rely on precision, getting pointy tidy points here is difficult.
Multi-unit Kusudama folding is something I enjoy – the emergent geometry and intricate interlocking of units to make a whole is very satisfying. None more than “Conglomerate” designed by Xander Perrott:
When I saw his fold on insta I knew I wanted to fold it – I had not seen anything quite like it, so I reached out to Xander and he shared instructions – how wonderful is the internet?
Let’s break this down – the kusudama is composed of 30 units, each folded from a rectangle in the proportions of 1: sqrt(3). Each unit has a triangle grid imposed on it, with triangular gussets to allow the “facets” of the faces to become 3D.
The geometry of the unit is very pleasing to fold, it all feels really natural, and the tiny collapse of the unit to make it 3D also feels right.
Interlocking the units …. now that seems to have taken me an age – each unit cups around one lobe and inside another lobe, forming a many-layered, staggered icosahedrons – each locked into place at multiple anchor points. It took me a while to master the locking process, then re-learn it as the orientation turned this way and that, but this kusudama needs no glue, and when a unit is fully locked in it is really rigid and strong.
I wish I remember where I found the “short” describing the unit folding for this lovely “sunflower ball”:
At the time, I practiced and learned the unit, modified it a little (removing the colour-change spiral) and then, a few weeks later decided to fold the whole thing. As I made progress in construction I realised I had NO IDEA whose design it was.
I turned to one of the many online origami communities I am a member of, and posted progress shots – fortunately it was identified as “Kamillen” designed by Irina Krivyakina.
I decided to hide the part colour change flap that causes a central spiral on each face, because I loved the shape of the geometry and thought the spiral detracted from it (my opinion only – I … have regrets).
Folded from 30 units, I decided to fold some of the 7.5cm square kami I have loads of … and … if I was to fold it again I would go bigger. The units have a lovely crenellated face, the tab-pocket mechanism is very fiddly but, when locked correctly, really positive.
With the development of origami design tools like Oriedta and Mu-Tsun Tsai’s astonishing “Box Pleating Studio”, origami design has in recent years gone through an explosion of complexity, innovation and artistry:
When I first saw Kimiro‘s new design for an Ammonite, I was astonished, then further amazed when he released the crease pattern – I knew I had to give it a try.
Ammonites are long extinct cephalopods (squiddy things) that lived in coiled shells – these shells are quite common fossils ranging from tiny (a few cm across) to massive (a couple of meters in diameter). Their closest living relative is the Nautilus I think. It is believed they, like the nautilus, could vary their buoyancy to control how deep they were in the ocean, and they probably had siphons that allowed them a little jet-propulsion.
Box pleating, by nature, results in blocky bases, the challenge is to make them feel rounded and organic. This model’s design has a good balance of fine detail and larger surface, and modelling and shaping it has taken me an age.
Initially I was sure the shell was fully closed 3D, but after posting some collapse and shaping progress photos on Origami Dan Discord, Kimiro himself popped into my DMs and showed me the back of his model – a half shell solved sooooo many problems. How amazing is it that in the age of the internet communication with the designer is actually possible. It continues to blow my mind how accessible origami legends are, and how helpful they are to noobs like me also.
I chose a lovely 45cm sheet of green/natural Damul matt Kraft paper (toying briefly with the idea of throwing shadow thai at it, but reasoned that I did not want a black shell or critter).
Laying in the grid was easy – finger pressure only (no bone-folded setting this time, as I wanted the creases to be as unobtrusive as possible), the CP is pretty simple, the shell spiral a lovely piece of geometry allowing a colour change.
My second experiment in radial perpendicular pleating was based on a 30cm square of crispy Kraft paper, a regular 32 grid and a random number sequence:
I decided it would be interesting to see what happens when you use random numbers to control the collapse sequence for a micropleat corrugation based on a regular 32 grid of mountain folds. I typed “100 random numbers between 1 and 3” in google and blow me down but there was a website for that: https://numbergenerator.org/100randomnumbersbetween1and3
Starting on the pleat just down from the centre line (in retrospect I wish I had started with the centre line, but… meh), I used the first 3 mountains and laid in micropleats (partial 128ths) across the sheet as uniformly as my fat clumsy, nerve damaged fingers would let me. I then rotated the paper 90 degrees clockwise, crossed out the first number and used the second number to determine how many cross-sheet micropleats to lay in. Rinse and repeat to the edge of the sheet.
