animal

505: Dragonfly

| wonko

As part of my JOAS membership, I get sent magazines with models to try – a really excellent collection of complex models from the worlds best designers. When I saw Satoshi Kamiya’s Dragonfly, I was really scared of it.505DragonFlyThe level of pleat management and re-arrangement of flaps and layers is truly terrifying when viewed as a whole.

As a “treat”, to reward my marking progress (I am a teacher, I set assessment but hate marking it) I allowed myself to complete a couple of steps each sitting. This fold has taken place over the period of 3 weeks, a little at a time. the advantage of this method is that I did not get freaked out by what was to come, just concentrating on the couple of steps I was allowed to complete. Continue reading →

About Face

| wonko

Faces are things we humans are born to recognise. We see them everywhere, we can recognise them with the barest of visual clues:

 Apparently even magpies do facial recognition, remembering the dive-bombing victim and their seeming boundary transgressions for years.

I am interested in the structure of faces, particularly how little paper manipulation is necessary to evoke a face that embodies an expression, the visual manifestation of attitude and mood.

Inspired by the work of Junior Fritz Jacquet, I am exploring how to fold faces from flat sheets without edge incursions, with the hope that it translates into tube-folded faces – we shall see. I have documented my progress below: Continue reading →

504: Coxless Four

| wonko

Rowing is huge at my school – a veritable machine that hundreds of kids get very passionate about, a gear-fest like few others:504CoxlessFour

Seems the purpose of the sport is to put boys in lycra, sitting atop tiny fiberglass shells, armed with a paddle rowing furiously backwards across vast distances of water. The competitive nature sees rowers exerting huge amounts of energy, enthusiasm and biomass in singles, teams of 2,4,and 8 with or without cox against other equally keyed-up teams. Quite a spectacle.504CoxlessFourView

Continue reading →

503: Man and Woman

| wonko

Flipping through an obscure copy of Papiroflexia Bicolour by Fernando Gilgado, I was struck with a pair of … models that looked like fun to make.503ManWoman

I had some small (10in) squares of handmade Kozo left over from the eagle fold and thought I would give it a whirl.

The fun and hilarity began – I have provided you with a cutout so you can do some arrangement depending on your orientation and preference – is it “Adam and Eve”, “Adam and Steve” or “Eve and Gwen” – you decide. Continue reading →

502: Super Dragon Deluxe

| wonko

Jeremy Shafer is a prolific and super talented Origami Designer:502SuperDragonDeluxe

When I saw his video of the Super Dragon Deluxe I knew I wanted to have a go – such a fun “cartoony” dragon with a lot of detail packed into such an accessible fold. Continue reading →

501: Eagle 3.5

| wonko

I am on constant awe of folders from the Vietnamese Origami Group (VOG):501eagle1

Hoang Trung Thanh’s Eagle 3.5 is an astonishing and dense fold that really tests patience, accuracy and paper but the result, even this partially incomplete rendition is lovely. Continue reading →

499: Kato’s Titan Beetle

| wonko

I was itching to do a technical fold, and realised I had folded few from the “Bugwars” book I bought for Xmas, so thought “why not”:499TitanBeetle

This fold has taken an age. I must admit that initially I had passed this over because it looked too fiddly, the CP alone was terrifying. Continue reading →

Copper Dragon

| wonko

As you may have guessed from subsequent posts, I have been learning to fold Satoshi Kamiya’s Ryujin 3.5:copperDragon

After a year of lessons, learning bits of the model and patiently/painstakingly working on each of the elements of the design, I managed to combine all onto one model. Continue reading →

498: Koh’s Rabbit

| wonko

Every so often a model emerges that has such a naturalistic form that so perfectly represents the subject. This lovely rabbit, designed by Ronald Koh is one such “must fold” figure:498Kohrabbit

This lovely model is a dense fold (the hind quarters are necessary layer-dense to form the necessary flaps for the head), so thin paper is best – I failed on a 14.5cm square of coarse hand-made paper – it was too thick and my fat clumsy fingers could not tease the details but 20cm+ squares of most papers should be fine. Continue reading →

497: Tyrannosaurus Rex

| wonko

I have been on holiday, 6 weeks is a long time between folds but I thought I would ease back into it with a simple model … then I saw Fumiaki Kawahata’s TRex and thought “screw it”:497RexView

Waiting in my kept mail was the last Tanteidan of the previous subscription, this little beauty on the cover and I thought – how hard can this be? Continue reading →

496: Satoshi Kamiya’s Ryujin 3.5

| wonko

On March 21, 2014, I began a quest to learn how to fold Satoshi Kamiya’s “Ryujin 3.5”, and was lucky enough to be accepted as a pupil of Mr Daniel Brown (MrOrigami).496SigmundRyu

Daniel sent me a lesson, I had to perform the illustrated tasks and photo my evidence back to him before he sent me the next lesson. The process has been fascinating, frustrating, amazing, annoying, hard, humbling, wild and wonderful.496SigmundRyuViews

A year on, I have managed to integrate all the component lessons into the one sheet (well, 2 halves joined at a seam inside) to arrive at this amazing model. It has yet to be fine-shaped – a task that will have to wait until marking and an extended holiday are over, but at least I know that all the creases are now in place, the bits are all where they should be and the beast is something I am unbearably proud of. Continue reading →

595: Twirly Bird

| wonko

I was asked if I could make a flock of birds designed to be attached to fishing line on the end of poles that seem to fly:496TwirlyBirdPrototype

I remember a “seagull” by Toyoaki Kawai, in an old book I had so based a fold around that basic form. Continue reading →

Something Fishy

| wonko

I was approached about the possibility of making some props for this year’s Middle School Musical, naturally I turned to Origami for Inspiration:OneFish

Project 1: a school of tropical fish. I remembered a lovely catfish/Koi designed by Davor Vinko. Continue reading →

492: Money Spider

| wonko

People keep giving me foreign and local paper currency. A work colleague gave me a pair of battered US1 dollar notes and asked if I could do anything with them. I had heard (old wives tale perhaps) that it was unlucky to kill a money spider. These little critters apparently bring financial good luck.492MoneySpiderScale

I figured MAKING a money spider should be lucky, so set about to find one. Won Park, in his book “Extreme Origami” has a rather lovely spider fold that requires 2xUSD$1 notes, so I thought I would give it a try. Continue reading →

491: Black Sheep

| wonko

On February 15, Chinese New Year kicks off – 2015 is the year of the Goat, but a sheepie is close, right? I thought I would take a preemptive strike given that I am sure to be really busy at work by then.491BlackSheep

The latest Tanteidan magazine features diagrams for Beth Johnson‘s Sheep – a lovely 2 part model and I was itching to give it a go. Continue reading →