One of the many models I have had on my “to fold” pile for ages is Chen Xiao’s “Walking in the Rain”:
This box-pleated model seems to have taken me an age to complete for many reasons (including what I consider a weakness of box pleating), but finally I committed a square of pre-prepared Wenzhou paper to a rendering of this design.
The paper was previously Eco Dyed: Sandwiched between each layer of the folded up sheet was various vegetative matter – onion skins, tea leaves and other tannin-based plants. This bundle was boiled for a few hours in a “dirty pot” containing red cabbage and purple carrots. The cooled bundle was then carefully washed to remove all the bits of vegetation leaving subtle stains. This paper I called “Cherry Blossom” Wenzhou because the dappled pinks and muted browns reminded me of blossom trees.
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.
Being an active member of an online community has many benefits. Origami communities often share diagrams, and this model was shared this morning on fakebook:
This is Ryosuke Sakurei’s “Dragon Baby”, a gorgeous little flapper that is pretty clever in it’s design. I searched for published sources, but it seems the Fakebook poster must have shared diagrams from a source I cannot identify.
I used one of my old-stock thick Shadow Thai sheets – green/black duo, a 40cm square, and the design allows that quite heavy paper to be folded neatly.
It is often that thickness of paper prevents you from completing models – well designed ones make allowances, and this is an example of one that is well designed.
The subtle use of colour change, the chunky volumetric body and the proportions are just lovely. I am very happy with how this turned out. The sequence is clear, fun and relatively straightforward, but it sucked me in so completely that I did not take any progress pictures, sorry.
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.
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.
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.
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 Hoà ng 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.
As far as I can tell, NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens) are dumb:
On this blog, NFTs stand for “Newly Folded Things”, but in the imaginary world of cryptocurrency and blockchain, NFTs were going to be the next big thing.
…until they were linked to money laundering, and people buying them realised that all they were actually buying was an entry in some blockchain register, not the “like, really cool, next level bored ape…man” [I assume that is how “the kids” now speak]
This NFT Bored ape was designed by Viswa Sarathi, and I stumbled across the design leafing through an edition of “Origamiaze – The Indian Origami Magazine Issue 02 December 2022” (yes, I was amazed there was one also)
Folded using duo Ikea Kraft paper, it was a fun (if wildly inaccurately diagrammed) fold – on re-fold I think I would refine the expression to make the ape even more bored.
I have long been drawn to the particular thrill of Science-Fiction based horror – few franchises do it like Alien:
This Xenomorph, designed by Kade Chan (you too can have a go at folding it here) was folded from a 60cm square of Crumpled VOG paper – a rare find in my stash, near last remnant of a purchase some 10 years ago when you could still buy VOG paper.
My previous fold of this model was in crispy Kraft in 2013, and I had always meant to return to it and fold a presentation fold. With the release of “Alien Romulus” in cinemas, I figured the chest burster was about ready to pop.
I first folded these little critters, designed by Robert J Lang, using a square cut from an A3 printer paper sheet back in 2011 as part of my original 365 project:
Remarkably, even with that terrible paper, all the features of the critter were present however not very refined.
Australians call these “Slaters”, but they also go under the name “wood lice” because these little isopods are found in decaying vegetation – which is why I decided they should be folded from Mango Leaf paper. It makes this fold a bit “meta” in that the critter is folded from mulberry paper that contains leaf litter.
The fold sequence is exacting, forming trapezoidal molecules for each of the 14 legs, along with antennae and a rather beautiful segmented shell. This model appears in a few of Robert’s books, I folded this one from “Origami Insects 2” – a rather splendid volume from Origami House in Japan. bought from Origami-shop (even though, strictly speaking, it is not an INSECT….).
I decided to fold two so we could see one open and one curling up into a little armoured ball – they do this when in danger.
One of the many advantages of being on the editing team for an origami book is that you get to see models before they make it into the wild. This Toucan, designed by Jiahui Li (Syn) appeared in the book “Comic Origami 2 – Feathered Friends” among a plethora of other fun folds:
I had a much used 40cm square of Origami-Shop Shadow Thai paper that I used and re-used (after ironing flat) to do test folds. I quartered it to make 4 20cm squares and set about finding folds for it.
Having folded Steven Casey’s 8×8 40 grid seamless chessboard and singularly failing to fold Marc Kirschembaum’s 40 grid because of crease-creep inaccuracies, I was approached by Daniel Brown and asked if I was interested in his chessboards – naturally I jumped at the chance. “Seamless” chessboards are deliciously more complicated because it required each square to be represented by an un-broken surface (as opposed to being able to be comprised of bits and pieces of layers – a much easier path):
A “clusterfuck” of seamless chessboards
I say CHESSBOARDS because Daniel has developed a series of coloured/white alternate seamless models of LOTS of sizes, and the skills necessary to migrate edge paper towards the centre to effect colour changes is a thing that needs some work and, often, particular “widgets” (or self-contained localised fold structures).
I started with the 4×4, rather efficiently designed on a 9×9 grid ( 0.444 efficiency). I had a piece of blue-white kami, so gave it a whirl. Even dimensions require different approaches for adjacent corners as they are different colours – the same colour corner exists on the diagonal.
Looking at my “must fold when time” pile, I remembered a diagram destoned for a Peter Buchan-Symons “Folding Fantasy” book:
This lovely duo colour dragon is designed by Matthew Dunstan, and is an interesting variation of a classic birdbase with some grafts for the head.
An intense little fold in places (the head in particular is really fiddly and thick), I really like this little western dragon with good proportions and a unique character.
I folded this from a 35cm square of Duo Kraft paper – a mistake in retrospect, it would have been easier (less finger bruising) with a larger thinner sheet. Originally I planned to fold it with my Shadow Thai, but I think it is too thick … now I know how the fold works I may still give that a go.
EDIT:
Folded with a 40cm square of origami-shop Duo Thai paper, with some extra detail and shaping, this little beauty is a treasure indeed
I virtually attended OWM4 (Origami World Marathon 4) recently – one of the classes I attended in the wee hours of the morning was a workshop run by Riccardo Foschi:
Riccardo has a recognisable style and his models are a delight to fold (you will find lots of them in this blog). This stylised human bust has such a serene expression on their face, I knew I wanted to try it.
My fold live in the workshop was ok, but re-visiting it when I had some more time (and better understood the fold) resulted in a nicer overall model.
I had recently purchased some “Shadow Thai” paper from Origami-shop.com and thought it would be a good fit for this model.
I chose a grey/smoke blue sheet (black on the reverse, it is a duo paper) and figured because it is a little thicker that it would help with the statuesque quality of the design.
When you talk of “box pleating”, the young kids in the origami design sphere seem to think they invented it. I was fishing around on the web, for origami-related things as you do, and stumbled across an astonishing scanned page from Neal Elias’ notebook from 1968 that features box pleating:
This is Neal’s “Boy on a motor scooter” – an amazing proto-design from 1968!!!!! (this is all there is, you have to fill in the gaps – it was his personal notebook, the diagrams were all HE needed to fold the model) but what an historical gem of a design. It is doubly interesting because it was designed 3 years before I began my journey in origami as a wide-eyed, clueless 11 year old.
Further research suggests this page was “ripped” from a BOS Publication Booklet 35 (still in print?) called “Neal Elias Miscellaneous Folds – II “, edited by Dave Venables. I have purchased the previous Neal Elias volume but was unaware this treasure exists – it has prototypes of some very famous and completely revolutionary designs indeed (like “The Last Waltz”).
Back in the “early” days of western origami, Elias was a pioneer, realising that by gridding a sheet of paper, then using gridlines and 45 degree connectors you could pleat astonishingly complex structures that could then be shaped into complex figurative models. As a kid, the few models I had access to from him were like crack to me. I mastered the “Elias stretch” (these days I think they call it a ‘pythagorean stretch’) and “Elias base”, making skiers and knights in armor, all from squares.
Many of his designs use odd shaped paper – this model uses an 8×22 grid, and the colour change base is particularly wonderful, leaving all the bits of a person in one colour and a lovely long pleat bundle of alternate colour emerging from him. I can see so much potential of all sorts of things here.
