humanoid

395: Showing Off

| wonko

Our local council library has a large glass display case that usually has things on show for a month. I cautiously asked one of the librarians if she thought some origami would interest patrons and she was very enthusiastic:

There are around 200 models now on show at Holland Park Library for June and I am quite chuffed about that.

Dragging 3 large tidy-tubs of models, most of which I had left over from the 365 Origami Auction, they fill the case rather completely.

You can see models designed by me amongst designs by such luminaries as Kade Chan, Robert Lang, Eric Joisel and many others.

In addition, I was asked to run a workshop in the first week of my school holidays for interested folders (10 years old and up) – see the Holland Park Library website for details and bookings if you are interested.

The only question that begs answer is what the floop I do with these lovelies AFTER the month on show? Suggestions welcome … dear reader?

394: Fagus “Scruffy” Poplar

| wonko

Ladies and gentleffolk, may I introduce to you Master Fagus Poplar, Scruffy to his friends:

this little chap is but 20cm tall, toes to tip of hat and is quite lovely, in the eyes of the folder.

Folded, from memory, trying a new technique for coat, shoulders, hat and arms, I quite like the fact he is waving. My hope is that he will stick around at the Origami exhibition that opens in the Holland Park Library this month. Continue reading →

392: “Snapper” Yew

| wonko

Ladies and Gentleffolk, can I introduce to you Master Bartok Yew, “Snapper” to his closest acquaintances

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“Snapper” is one of the first ever tourist gnomes, traveling far and wide. His memory is probably the third worst ever recorded and so always travels with his camera (hence the nickname which describes his habits of continually happy-snapping

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Young Bartok was folded in Yorkshire, from a square of wrapping paper left over from … Well … Wrapping. He was achieved with no glue or other aid, but I did add a button to keep his jacket closed tidily (dress sense he picked up from Pierre, a distant relative).

The camera is an invention and, given more time and paper would be much more stable. Together he looks like a real tourist

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…and I should know what a tourist looks like, I have been spending 6 weeks being one.

Bartok was last seen mooching around in Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, probably sponging off some unsuspecting family for board and lodging. We hope his well and does not run out o ffilm any time soon.

391: Pierre Mâché en Francais

| wonko

….Puis je vous présenter Monsier Pierre Mâché, my first internationally folded gnome:

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You see, we are currently in Paris, on a vacation that has been in the planning stages for years, and we had an astonishing meal at a local restaurant Les Enfants Perdus, and I noticed they topped their tables with a square of sueded cream colored paper.

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In my best French, I asked pour Le paper sur la table and they gave me a fresh one to fold. The paper was stiff but really strong, so I was able to model this guy a lot more than I usually can, or maybe I am just getting better.

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I like how his posture worked out, he definitely looks French and is gesturing as if to express exasperation that he cannot understand us odd Australians, we get that a lot.

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We will leave him as a gift to our hosts here in Paris, the apartment we have rented from them is wonderful, very well appointed, comfortable and essential to us keeping going each busy day.

Au revoir Paris, our first visit has been magical

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384: Squiffy “Woombye” Larch

| wonko

Ladies and Gentlefolk, may I introduce young Squiffy Larch, “Woombye” to his friends:

During a mad weekend, we visited Woombye Pub for a fantastic lunch and I noticed they put on their square tables, a beautiful big square of brown paper.

Naturally I put 2 and 2 together and got 7, and decided it needed to be folded into a gnome, and Squiffy was born.

The paper is amazing, takes folds well, is tough and the resultant gnome is the largest I have folded so far.

Quite happy with the face, he has a lovely grin amongst a full beard, noble nose and a quaint, slightly sozzled look in his eyes. His hands were crying out for something drink-related so I invented a beer stein and all was good.

Will organise to send Squiffy to Woombye – he belongs in a bar. He is very happy (that will be the pint he is working on) to be joining the ranks of the “other” seven dwarfs.

382: Self Made Man – Revisited

| wonko

I was determined to test whether my first fold of this nightmarish, but charming, fold was merely a fluke or not, so I set about folding it from a 3×5 cut from an A1 sheet.

The geometry for this model is amazing, and the challenge is to only put in the folds that are necessary to achieve the collapse – an interesting challenge indeed as construction lines, preliminary constructions and fold-flow ons are difficult to control with such large format paper.

I love the result, given this paper was thinner than the original #365 fold, the features and structure are much more considered and I think he has a lot more character in his face and pose.

This is one of my favourite folds from last year, and now I know it was not a fluke, I can fold it with confidence when I need to.

He is now on proud (temporary) display in the Library, with a suitable verse before him.

381: Rodin’s Reader

| wonko

It is little known (partially because it is blatantly not true) that Rodin, prior to sculpting his masterpiece “The Thinker” had an altogether different idea:

Our school library is celebrating the National Year of reading by exploring a different theme each month – March is “think” so I put 2 and 2 together and got 17.3.

Based on Neal Elias’s box pleat, this little model is cute with a Brill “Spelling Book” on his lap.

Will not be around for the next couple of themes so this will have to do for a little while

380: Project Davros

| wonko

I had this idea in my head that is should be possible to fold a DALEK (you know, that improbable plunger-wielding arch nemesis of Dr Who) from a single sheet of paper:

I began over a two week period to explore the morphology of a Dalek, to come to the conclusion that it is most certainly possible, and that this attempt is very nearly it.

I decided to start with an A2 sheet, figuring that it would be bent in half eventually and curved to make the recognisable armature and leaving paper for eye, manipulators and a nice domed head. Numerous trial scraps of paper were mangled to test various collapse/crinkle ideas that in the end informed the final shaping. The odd shape, the necessary texturing (bumps are essential, apparently, to Daleks), the position of the eye stalk in relation to the plunger/laser hand thingies proved very troublesome with this shape paper and, in retrospect, it would have been better to start with a square – live and learn I guess.

I learnt a lot about myself in this fold – resisting the urge to set a crease is HARD, regretting a misplaced crease later is worse. I found I could, in my head, envisage something and then create it within the limitations of paper fairly faithfully. A LOT of maths-type thinking went in to the original sheet division and that both helped and hindered in the final model as I found taking the highly geometric shapes and making them more organically round was very challenging.

In the end this is NOT a great dalek, it is however a fantastic start. Should I attempt this again I now know more about the final shape to plan better for it – I assumed, you see, that it would sort of just “sort itself out” – this was far from true – much time was spent looking at the mess I had made and working out how to make it less messy (or just hide it and deny it was there).

The final model is not pure origami – given the time and paper torsion, I had to help some parts stay together with little buts of stickey tape on the inside – some of those fine pesky pleats splay over time I found. With different paper (tissue foil for instance) the folds would stay folded a lot better I would guess.

Given this is my FIRST FOLD of this design, and I was working to designs in my head, it was very satisfying. Should I attempt it again I would do it slightly differently, arrange things on the sheet with the final shaping in mind a little better. I think Davros would be proud of my efforts at resurrecting the master race however. Good work if you bothered to read this far, say HI to your mum for me.

377: Balthazaar Quercus

| wonko

So, it emerges that Dweezil has a little brother. Ladies and Gentleffolk, if I may introduce Master Balthazaar Quercus, aged 6¾:

I was asked to liberate this cute little chap from the flat sheet of lithography paper he was trapped in as a parting gift for a colleague. Aware this may create precedent, this is my first COMMISSIONED dwarf (my charities will be well pleased with the extra injection of funds).

I took what I had learned from wrangling Dweez’ and refined the model – this is free standing, on a base (a bit of wood covered also in litho paper offcuts – like the one I used for Mortimer). I liked the sitting on a stack of books idea, so pierced a stack of three with some structural wire that goes into a hole in the base and goes up Balthy’s bottom, carries on up his back and across his shoulders to support him.

The result is charming – I think I nailed the facial expression (although how a 6¾ year old dward has such a full beard is something only another dwarf could answer) and am getting quite good at the whole pointed, curley shoes thing.

There seems a demand for dwarves, they are all different indeed and this one was folded entirely by memory (quite proud of that, given how unreliable my memory is). If YOU want one, have your people call my people, we can agree on the finances (charity days are numbered, once ALL the 365 origami debt is cleared then I guess the funds should be redirected to the paper wrangler).

376: Langton Willow III

| wonko

Ladies and Gentleffolk, if I may be so bold as to introduce to you Mr Langton Willow III:

…so I bought a lovely book about an Origamist I worship, Eric Joisel, and was scanning pages prior to an in-depth read and came accross what seemed like an impossibility – a dwarf in a box. There were some photos of a couple of versions of the finished model and some sketches of crease patterns that might have been used to make it and nothing else …

So I decided to give it a whirl. The crease patterns gave no clues on what were mountain and valley folds (fairly important if you are going to make the model) so I sort of “guessed” most, and added a bunch of lines that would make the folding easier later, so I thought. I chose a large format paper – 1.2m x 0.6m, and in brown paper – thank goodness as even laying in the creases (a 2.5 hour job) put massive strain on a number of key points.

When it came to the collapse I must admit to being nervous – odd in retrospect but I had pre-announced to the social notwerks that I was attempting it and that was a mistake because psychologically that meant I could not fail in my attempt.

Studying the illustrations carefully, it became clear that when Joisel had his first try, there were odd gusset pleats on the OUTSIDE of the box that the dwarf sits in, I figured with some deft folding I could remove them and tuck that paper inside the box.

I must admit to grinning ear to ear when I worked out how I could do that tidily. This model was a fascinating exercise in not rushing to set a crease. After getting up, making another cup of tea, doing something else, coming back, leaving it a while then returning to it etc. I found a tidy method of tucking away what seemed like acres of paper inside the box to leave … well .. the box.

Conceptually we have split a dwarf – the head/arms and the legs/feet are split apart and the paper for a box is inserted between – the only difficult is ensuring a box-like remnant that lets you also tuck the dwarf-bits inside.

Oddly, the proportions of the dwarf necessitate lanky legs and a gaunt head, but that is in-keeping with the overall feeling of the model. It is like the dwarf is trying to get out of the box – what he was doing in there in the first place is a mystery, but there you go.

I have to admit to being very proud of achieving this model – the result is delightful, there is an astonishing amount of paper tucked away to reveal a lanky dwarf with real character.  I have no idea what I will do with this chap – it was originally going to be something I tried for shits and giggles, fully expecting to fail but the grinning has not stopped. I have “cheated” by using a few paper clips to keep the box corners together but I think Joisel would forgive me that.

374 Dweezil Quercus

| wonko

I have pleasure in introducing to you Master Dweezil Allegory Quercus Esq, or Daq to his friends:

Dweezil loves to read, and can often be found with his nose in a book, idling the day away. Fond of mysteries, amazing adventures, current affairs and other dwarfish literature, subscriber to “Rolling Stonework”, “Wood Working Monthly” and “PlayDwarf” (but only for the articles), he is very well read.

My attempt at an original Joisel Gnome, using the crease pattern from my newly purchased Joisel treasury book, I wanted this little chap to appear bookish, nerdy and absorbed. I folded 4 hard cover books – it seemed natural to have him perched atop a stack of books.

I fashioned a set of glasses, because all that reading underground, with poor lighting would play merry hell to even the keenest of dwarf eyes. He also has cutie curly toed shoes, a necessary fashion accessory for the dwarf about town.

In the end, I like this little chap a lot, he seems full of character and life. I think he might be a worthy addition to the School Library for their year of reading theme because it clearly shows that it is not just humans that like a good tale. I crowd-sourced the name – Quercus is the genus of most OAK trees, a continuing theme and “Allegory” because it is cool – thx Lindy and Julie for your help.

I vodcasted some of his genesis on Kondoot, if you are interested.

Dweezil will live, strangely enough, in the School Library, at least for a while. Our RE Department had a timber lantern they were throwing out so I purloined it as a suitable dwarf-enclosure and now have him ensconced within. I fashioned labels that make him look like a preserved museum specimen, and have placed “Warning, do not feed the dwarf” labels on the outside to warn the young people who are likely to try and mess with him.

All in all, a nice character study – it is interesting because, although his base fold was similar to all the other dwarves I have folded, his personality became apparent as I folded him – as though the paper knew how it wanted to end up and I merely channelled it. I do not understand that process but am constantly delighted by it.

373: Mermaid

| wonko

When I first saw this pattern, I thought “oh no, more cobra pleating” and relegated it to the “not before counselling” pile:

At the moment the weather is wet, hot and the humidty is such that you could cut it with a knife and I got to thinking who would be at home in this sort of weather – the answer was obvious, a mermaid.

I have some offcuts of lithography paper, they just so happen to be as near as anything to 2×1, so this model works well on them – mind you, at this scale, the tail pleating is close to as fine as I can actually do with that paper – folding 24ths down to 4mm is not fun and the paper did not like it, humidity not helping at all.

In the end, we have a lovely figurative mermaid – slightly fishy, lovely flowing hair, hand modestly covering ample bosom and calm face. Her posture suggested reclining – I believe they “moon-bake”, not sure where I got that from but anyway I made a rock for her to luxuriate on and it sort of works.

I learned a lot folding this for the first time, and will probably fold it again, I think I can improve the upper body a little – we shall see. Happy with the result none the less. You would get a decent fillet off her I would guess – the other other other white meat?

The instructions (well, actually a fairly rough folding guide actually) were in French, with odd proprietary annotations but it was fairly obvious what was going where from the outset – ingenious and not dissimilar to something I was working on myself but abandoned because it got busy last year.

post-script: In talking to Eric Vigier on Facebook, he had this to say:

Yes it’s mine , and you’re right in your comment : “odd proprietary annotations” but for my defence it’s my first diag , made at hands in 2002, i’m always happy to see that I drew it for something , so thank you ! For the story, I met Eric Joisel in 2002, we became friends and met regulary at his home at this time and when he saw my mermaid he said me that he would like to do one since a certain time , so I gave him my diag and the result is the magnificent mermaid you try actually , that is the sharing way i like to see in the Origami world !”

How wonderful is this Internet-encircled world I ask you?

372: Satoshi’s Wizard

| wonko

Now I hate it when things get the better of me. Mid year I tried this model only to have it disintegrate in my hands half-way through amid a flurry of swearing:

This is Satoshi Kamiya’s Wizard – well, my rendition of it at least. It is fairly faithful to the instructions and I am totally stoked I actually made it to instruction 159 with paper largely intact and the resultant tortured mess looking even vaguely wizard-like.

This is a breathtakingly difficult fold – take ONE square of paper and from it fold a man (face, hat, hands with 5 fingers each) in a pleated, swirling robe, and make she he has a full-size staff as well. He free-stands, one hand grips his staff, the other is in mid-conjure and there is a sense of movement and authority about his pose.

Wow!

This has taken me an age, I have tried not to proceed until I actually understood the next instruction (no mean feat near the end when judgement is more important that reference creases) and for my first successful fold I am totally stoked. I videoed a 1.5 hour section near the middle of this model, last weekend, and thought Australia day (today, a public holiday) was as good a time as any to finally finish it. I did not take into account the effects of the stifling humidity of the paper, making it very brittle, so care, attention and only a little bit of swearing was necessary.

Now I know what ends up where, I suspect the next time i fold this (and yes, I think I will) will go more smoothly I suspect.

371: Mortimer Greenoak

| wonko

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I introduce Master Mortimer Greenoak Esq. A young but not inexperienced forest dwarf who has a particular talent with timber:

This lovely fellow is destined for greater things but I am thrilled with him, my second Eric Joisel-inspired dwarf.

It was hot, I needed to get out of the house for a couple of hours so took a large square of paper and the ourPAD to out local library and sat, and folded. Interestingly I also conversed with complete strangers who gathered to watch the paper mangling – they were interested and I was relaxed enough to explain what I was attempting.

In the end, I made Morty slimmer and so made him look younger, and played around with the face a bit – another step closer to mastering the face, will keep at it. he is quite tidy apart from his beaten up face – I ended up modelling a pendulous nose and pushed out his cheekbones to suggest eyes under the brim of his hat. Quite happy with the beard and mouth though.

His posture called for a walking stick, and I envisaged a base that would allow him to be displayed easily. The name? It just seemed to work, and references his eventual owner in interesting ways.

He is not free-standing, I do not know how to make them so (the ankles and feat are so thin that they defy attempts to support the weight above. All versions of this model I have seen are plastered with methyl cellulose (apparently the Origamist’s goop of choice) but I think that is cheating a little.

Determined to solve the display issue, I cut a rectangle of timber (shock, horror, I picked up a SAW), covered it with the same paper he was made from (the sheet off-cut actually), drilled a small hole nearly all the way through and then made a wire brace that fits inside him neatly and exits down one leg, so he is pose-able now. I added a bent paper clip amongst the folds of his elbow to keep it bent – it kept wanting to straighten because of the thickness of layers there – all acceptable cheats I think for the longevity of the model.

365: Turn a New Leaf

| wonko

Our lives are a lot like a blank sheet of paper – WE decide when to put creases, who adds folds, how permanent they are and we are constantly given a fresh sheet to start over:

This is my interpretation of Eric Joisel’s “Self-Made Man”, a little origami man that is folding himself and I am stoked that this worked, given how little information I had to go on and the scale of the materials.

I started with a 78x130cm rectangle (3:5 for those trying to do the maths) and then transferred a crease pattern (the only clue I had as to how to actually achieve this model) on to the sheet.

The “collapse” was an exercise in self control really as the paper was really brittle and there were some complicated accordion pleats that seemed to turn in on themselves. The aim was to leave a square of paper (26x26cm) unfolded and build the little man (arms, legs, head) to seemingly appear from behind this sheet.

In the end, the layers were thick, it weighs a ton but more importantly he has loads of personality and is a fitting end to my 365 Origami Challenge.

In retrospect, this is an amazing fold and with some careful planning, patience and ample cups of tea I am so very proud to have folded it. Hope you like him too.

This little fellow has a special purpose, so will not be auctioned, sorry.