reptile

994: Mushu

| wonko

Riccardo Foschi frequently shares crease patterns for his new designs on social media. When I saw “Mushu” I knew I had to try and fold it:

Foschi CP

It is rare to find a “happy” dragon, but this one beams a positive energy that makes you smile. There is lots of detail to take in – the head has branched horns, smiling eyes, lovely colour-changed curly whiskers, nostrils, teeth, a lovely wiggly tongue, lower jaw and a beard. A lovely set of back spikes, each leg has 3 toes and the beautiful fan tail caps off the beastie.

Mushu

Made over a period of a week, from 5x 2:1 rectangles of odd spotty black Ikea Kraft. Sections form variously tail, legs, body and head modules, all of which ingeniously interlock without the need for glue. Riccardo also states that it can be made with a single 10:1 rectangle, but I thought that would be too wasteful when cut from a paper roll, so decided on the modular approach.

My problem with crease patterns is that, although they show the major creases, they do not really hint on the shaping or fold order. The head, in particular, took me a while to sort out. I decided, contrary to the designers photo, to fold the legs differently – I think they look more natural this way (but I folded forward, backward, forward and back many times before deciding on this configuration).

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987: Ryu Zin Junior 2.1

| wonko

Rounding out my Ryu journey, I decided to use a small scrap of Kozo left over from another project to fold Jason Ku’s Ryu Zin Junior 2.1:

Jason Ku Ryu Zin 1.2

While sharing some of the nomenclature of the Satoshi Kamiya chinese dragon series, this little chap is markedly different on every level. I found a set of photo diagrams lovingly annotated by Daniel Brown, and thought I would give is a whirl.

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Chinese Dragon in Repose

| wonko

My usual line “if you find interesting paper, get it and I will make you something out of it” has been the start of many fascinating journeys:

Mikiller觅晨’s modular dragon

Peter and Majella travelled to Japan, and found some lovely paper – one, a sheet of hand-made natural Kozo with botanical inclusions screamed out for something delicate and textured. I had intended to return to Mikiller觅晨’s modular dragon, having already folded it large, I thought it might be interesting to fold it tiny and trap it in a shadowbox frame.

The handover
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976: Snek

| wonko

Now I am not a fan of sneks … at all … but folding one so cute seemed like a good idea at the time:

snek views

This is Christophe Boudias’ “Serpent”, and is a natty use of duo kami.

The detail here is worth noting – lovely mesmerising eyes, gaping mouth with fangs, and a lovely stripey body.

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966: Green Turtle

| wonko

As part of an origami challenge on Fakebook, we were challenged to fold the Green turtle from Origami Pro #4, designed by Jang Yong Ik :

green Turtle designed by Jang Yong Ik

I split off a square from a 70cm roll of black/natural Ikea Kraft and started the diagonal pleat pre-creasing.

Over a period of a couple of weeks, fitting it into life, the universe, and everything, I folded this intense model, really determined to enjoy the process.

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963: Hanji Ryu Jin

| wonko

A colleague brought me back some Hanji paper from her visit to Korea, and I was wondering what to fold with it when I stumbled across a post on Facebook describing a modular money dragon fold.

Hanji Ryu

Designed by Hieu Dang, modified & diagrammed by Lien Quoc Dat ( tutorial: youtube.com/c/LQDchannel ) to be folded from 10 x bank notes, and thought it was worth a go. When I wrestled with an american dollar, deciding it too small for me to fold, I scaled up and cut 10 x 1:2 rectangles from a burgundy sheet of Hanji, and began folding.

Made with bank notes

This reminds me a LOT of Satoshi Kamiya’s Ryu Jin 3.5, but not as many scales, still, it s a time-consuming fold, and many of the techniques are repetitive, but manageable. I found the diagrams on the head really difficult to fathom, and the low resolution images made it difficult to to work out what’s what. See for yourself.

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925: Crouching Dragon

| wonko

Origami dragons and wyverns seem to be a bit of a “holy grail”, with the more complex gaining almost mythic reputations for breaking folders spirits when they attempt them:

I came upon the diagrams for this charming model shared on fakebook, and it took a moment to hunt down the designer – Shaku on Flickr. Continue reading →

837: (287/365) Jackson’s Chameleon

| wonko

Looking for a nice, rich, challenging fold for the day, I knew I needed to try a model from Robert Lang:

This is his model “Jackson’s Chameleon” – a deliciously complicated model with all the chameleonic bits you expect.

Working with a slightly un-square square of light green washi, the pre-folding is fascinating, layer management and seemingly impossible moves abound – there were many times I thought I had screwed up, only to find out that it worked. Continue reading →

813: (263/365) Llook out, there are Llamas!

| wonko

PART 2: THE LLAMA, LIVE FROM GOLDERS GREEN
The llama is a quadruped
which lives in big rivers like the Amazon.

It has two ears,
a heart,
a forehead,
and a beak for eating honey,
but it is provided with fins for swimming.
Llamas are bigger than frogs. Continue reading →

788: (238/365) Sea Turtle

| wonko

Exploring Facebook, as one does, a delightful little sea turtle was posted in a group I am a member of by Migue Crm:

A simple 16×16 grid, some lovely waterbomb collapses for shell scales and some lovely flippers make this a fantastic model all round. Continue reading →

779: (229/365) Karma Chameleon

| wonko

I went looking for something reptilian to fold today (not sure why) and found this little charmer designed by Marc Vigo:

Using a series of rabbit ears on a 2×1 rectangle, you isolate legs, head and tail rather cleverly. Continue reading →

736: (186/365) Stoopid Monkey!

| wonko

Australian politicians are a weird lot. Not “American” (shoot first then barbeque something) weird, just an odd lurch from crisis to crisis and stab your mate in the back for a shot at leadership kind of weird:

A recently deposed Prime Minister (Mr Tony Abott) is being a bit of an arse clown in the media, white-anting his own party and providing gifts for our hapless opposition in terms of instability and leaks. Continue reading →

730: (180/365) No Frills

| wonko

Exploring Tanteidan Magazine 138, I noticed a rather lovely Frill Necked Lizard that I had not yet tried:
This is Gen Hagiwara’s Frilly, a torturous fold that spends lot of time isolating legs and tail from the large corner that would become the frill and head.


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611: (61/365) Pocket Godzilla

| wonko

I remember as a kid being a fan of most things science fiction, and loving Japanese monster movies particularly:

There is something rather charming about a monster, effected by radiation, growing really big then being annoyed by greedy people, subsequently reeking havoc on highly populated areas of Japan. Continue reading →