animal

364: SNOWY!

| wonko

When I was a kid, my parents gave me Tintin Annuals to read – the adventures of a young ginger and his dog Snowy:

I must admit I have fond memories for the adventures of Tintin, and had clear ideas in my mind of what Captain Haddock, Thompson and Thompson and Professor Cuthbert Calculus were like. I have just seen the film and I was delighted to say the least. What a cracking tale, told so wonderfully. You realise why they chose of do it as computer animation – most Tintin adventures would be un-filmable in live action given the pace, locations and lunatic athleticism.

At breakneck speed I was transported back to the Secret of the Unicorn, Red Rackham’s Treasure and other adventures I had – I remember 6, but wikipedia says there were 24 in total, so i only saw a small collection of Hergé stories really.

Although I have never really liked dogs, I was always taken with Snowy, Tintin’s faithful dog – I loved that he could talk to the dog and the dog actually understood – as an adult that makes no sense but as a kid there was no problem. Mind you, I accepted Lassie, Me Ed and all so my brain was already soft 😛

This is a “billfold” – that is it was originally designed to be folded out of an american dollar bill. I do not have any so I used the interweb to find the dimensions, doubled them and cut a rectangle to size. The instructions were very poor, actually, and at many junctures I merely “improvised” as I knew where we were going but could not follow how I was being told to get there.  In the end we have a plucky rendition of Snowy, and the second last model in the 365 challenge. Hope you like him.

363: Tree of Wisdom

| wonko

You know that feeling when you plan (and see quite clearly in your head) something and then it turns out exactly like you envisaged it? This is one of those moments:

I had a model fail on a large sheet of lithography paper and considered binning the resultant crumpled mess, but remembered an origami technique pioneered by Paul Jackson in 1972 called “crumpling”. You take a piece of paper (I carefully unfolded the model fail) and systematically crumple it, unfold it, re-crumple in a different place and direction, unfold and repeat. The result is a deliciously textured and malleable sheet that can then be formed, when dampened slightly, into lovely organic shapes.

I had this idea of a gnarled tree (modelled on a bonsai I have had since before my 23yo son was born) and so set about fashioning one, twisted and poorly pruned though it is. I then wet it, and bound it with a little twine while it dried.

Atop this lovely tree is the most lovely owl by Hideo Komatsu – I have held off folding this because he is designed to be perched (as in he does not stand on flat surface but rather sits astride some horizontal thing.  1+1=a million. I love this, it is still making me smile and I know the perfect thing for him – sorry, NO auction for this one.

It is so rare that an idea so perfectly matches the expression of that idea but this is one such occasion. I have learnt so much about myself and paper over the course of this year that this model seems fitting as the project winds up.

362: Young Buck

| wonko

Amongst the plethora of models I still have not yet tried, there are some beauties:

This is Roman Diaz’s Deer and it is a lovely specimen indeed. 10 points on his antlers, proud stance and a spring in his step.

This model, though lovely, was a cow to fold – hand drawn instructions that were not to scale, step 41 I missed altogether, which caused no end of peril and a re-fold (so sue me).

In the end this is fantastic – you get a real sense of the animal, the proportions and stance feel quite natural, the ingenious mangling to get enough points for the antlers amazing and the wrangling to get the majority of the paper tucked away to reveal the body nothing short of breathtaking.

Diaz has a unique style, this model features closed sinks in abundance (quite difficult to do well) and so provided me with some valuable practice.

361: Cicada

| wonko

For me the sounds of summer always include the trill of cicadas:

This is Robert Lang’s “Periodical Cicada” which is similar to the adult form we hear but rarely see. They spend most of their lives underground, emerge as wierd wingless mutants, clumb up something and moult, leaving the most beautiful exoskeletons behind.

Many a summer day was spent as a kid collecting these and terrifying my sister with them … well, kids are kids I suppose.

There is much to admire about this fold – the layer management, proportions of body to wing and ensuring there was enough for some lovely legs is one amazing design. Folded from an ebook on my iPad (why have I not been doing this before???), it was a nice way to spend an afternoon whilst an afternoon storm rolled in. I folded it big (60cm square) and cannot imagine folding it much smaller without extraordinary paper.

It is a relief to have achieve this, as I had a model fail before it (a hand-drawn set of spanish instrucitons started out a bit iffy and after 2 hours went nowhere – you get that sometimes).

359: Santa Claus is Coming to Town

| wonko

You better watch out. You better not cry
Better not pout, I’m telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town.
He’s making a list. And checking it twice;
Gonna find out Who’s naughty and nice
Santa Claus is coming to town

This is a David Brill tableau, scaled down to teeny weeny because … well, because … because I could? I have a packet of shiny small origami paper so used that for the micro-reindeer – they sort of determined the scale for the remainder of the figures.

There is much to like about this festive scene – The sleigh is full of water bombs (the perfect summer gift), Santa sits, the reindeer seem animated and Rudolph has a lovely red nose, courtesy of a suggestion from “she who must be obeyed” to use a glass headed pin – good call.

I hope this post finds you enjoying family, fun and festive cheer. Our Christmas Origami display is as you see it here – most of these models are available for you in the auction house for a limited time only.

357: Get Folked

| wonko

‘Tis the season when thoughts of old hippies (and new-age trendies) shift to prepping for the Woodford Folk Festival:

I am old enough (and formally a resident) to remember when this gathering was held at Maleny, and how the locals hated this time of year because of the huge influx of afore-mentioned hippy-hopefuls.

Folk guitar is one of my pet hates – I fantasise about “tuning” a folk guitarist’s acoustic guitar with an AXE. I am not ashamed of this viewpoint. Lord knows it was difficult enough to cope with whilst stoned and off your tits on ‘shrooms. Whining, newage plucking and tie-die are the bane of a modern existence – there, I said it!.

This is Robert Lang’s “strumming guitarist” folded from his brilliant “Origami in Action” book. There is much to like about this ingenious model, including a body AND guitar from one square, uncut.

It is an ACTION model – in that it is specially designed to MOVE – you grab the legs, and jiggle the head in and out and he strums the guitar entusiastically – very neat.

I would like to say the instructions were flawless – I am convinced there are 3 errors, having unfolded, re-folded and swore a lot at a couple of junctures. Still, in the end I improvised and it worked fine.

356: Great Egret

| wonko

Well, when I say great .. it is  … ok :

For the size of paper I am amazed how small this bird ended up, so much paper is folded into the body and legs to reveal the essential egret shape.

A lovely sold body, slender (although I would have liked to have made them thinner, alas the media would not let me), nifty serpentine neck and simple head – all you would want in an egret I would say.

I am not sure whose model this is – anyone like to help me identify it? This is 356 meaning there are a total of 10 more models left – getting exciting it is.

Like this? Want it? BID for it now.

354: Should have bought a Squirrel

| wonko

One of my wife’s favourite movies is a comedy called “Rat Race”, the title of today’s model is one of the “morals” of that cautionary tale:

Akira Yoshizawa is credited as being the father of artistic origami – he also invented the diagramming language we all follow now.

This is his squirrel – a lovely 2-part model that uses relatively few folds to reveal the squirrel-nicity of paper beautifully.

There is much to like about this model – lovely face and ears, nice posture and a bushy tail. I also like that most of the folds used judgement rather than landmarks – that way a little of the character of the folder is intrinsically captured in the model making no 2 folds identical.

An ingenious system of locking the 2 parts together is employed – the rear half has pokey-outey parts that are re-folded into the shoulder folds of the front half – nice work Yoshizawa Sensei.

353: Lang’s Praying Mantis

| wonko

Wow. You know, sometimes a set of instructions for a model are so well designed that it is a pleasure to fold – time just … goes – so it was with this little beauty:

Robert Lang is a design genius, using mathematical and art sensibilities he has distilled what is essentially “mantis” and worked out ways of folding away everything but this essence.

Six beautiful legs, front two “prayey” ones with claspers, glorious head with inquisitive antennae, approporiate proportioned body and, well, wow, just wow.

I am not going to pretend that I did not struggle with this, but after yesterday’s model I was determined to go for accuracy, so necessary with so many accordion pleats. The legs are soooooo thin – painful to fold but amazingly brown paper survived without any paper fatigue.

I am so please with this model – all aspects of it. I folded opened-out paper clips into the legs to give them strength so she can stand freely and so the “knee” joints stay bent – 20+ layers of paper are really hard to bend and I envisaged accidentally snapping off a leg whilst trying to shape it.

I will fold this again, should I ever get some more suitable paper – needs to be tissue thin but really strong – normal paper will just not work. Bravo Mr lang, your figure is a masterpiece and I for one feel honoured to have folded it.

352: Satoshi’s Ancient Dragon

| wonko

Some folds are good for telling you that you still have much to learn – this is one of them:

An ASTONISHING model, that took me an age to almost achieve, so many different techniques and punishing to the paper. I started yesterday morning with a 60cm square of brown paper determined to keep folding until either I totally buggered it up, the paper disintegrated or it worked.

As it turned out, errors (small inaccuracies) in folding early on, and a few misinterpretations of unexplained folds meant that later stages were more complicated and hence less tidy.

I have learnt a lot from this fold – there are some breathtaking manoeuvres and heart stopping moments when you turn the page and the next instruction is “unfold everything” but in the end I am satisfied that I got a vaguely “ancient dragonny” model and more importantly I now know what goes where. I will fold this again and am sure that second time around the result will be tidier but take a moment to consider the details:

8 horns, skull, eyes, jaw on the head alone, lovely toes, 4 of them on each of 4 feet, amazing wings that look like they are flapping, leathery scaled body (a ridgetail, for sure – Potter fans agree?). The body, at it’s thickest, has over 40 layers which makes some of the shaping and final modelling tough work. I am at a loss to know what sort of paper you could do this with – I am however amazed with the brown paper – it did not tear or fatigue even once – long after the folder had sworn, stormed off only to return later and keep trying.

I am really glad I tried this model, a useful reminder that I am no master of the art, merely this guy who bends paper,

351: Diaz’s Stallion

| wonko

Roman Diaz is one of many talented Spanish origamists and with this model he captures something of the proud noble stallion:

there is much to like about this model – apart from it being a nifty use of the fish/camel base, the posture, proportions and attitude evident in the horse are present in this little model. He is also free-standing, on 3 legs, neato.

A slight mis-calculation in scale made this model really difficult to fold – the thickness of paper and tiny details made shaping a real challenge – I will fold this bigger because there is much model-ability here, truly clever design.

I got caught up in a much more complicated fold and completely forgot I had no fold for today, so searched the list of “must dos” and came up with this one. Happy with this as a first fold.

350: Little Devil

| wonko

This cutie little devil is such a snarly fold, but was a lot of fun because the design was well thought out:

Jun Maekawa models are always well planned but this little beauty started much bigger – folded from a 60cm square, the resultant model is barely 13cm toe to horn and I am so glad I decided to use brown paper instead of regular copy paper – the thicknesses are 17-23 layers in places – wow.

A lovely set of hands, splendid demonic tail, horns, frown and a cutey tongue – this guy is a masterpiece that has taken me an age to fold. I started earlier this afternoon to cheer myself up after attending a funeral, and this evening he is finally finished.

I have seen miniature versions of this (including one folded by Jun himself that is only a couple of cm tall, in a bottle) and I am buggered if I can work out how you could fold it much smaller – it is so fiddly in so many junctures.

I had no idea on this, the first fold, what was what – I will fold this again  now I know how it works – it is not a speedy fold, so many layers but I see extra modelling potential in the face – so much more could be made of his expression. Although he is meant to be a little devil, he is rather cute and free-standing also, using feet and tail the tripod is effective to offset the weight of paper folded into the body.

This fold achieved, it means I have only 15 models left in this challenge – bring it on.

349: Orca

| wonko

Now I have gradually come to realise that captive cetaceans must lead a miserable life – dolphins particularly given tehy “see” with sonar, but the Orca is also something that does not belong in captivity:

This is Satoshi Kamiya’s Orca, well my go at it – for the most part it worked but there are some untidy parts that , in retrospect, I cannot work out if they were my fault or the fault of the diagrams.

With duo paper, this model is the standard black with white parts (or is that white with black parts) – was tempted to make the dorsal droop (in honour of “Willy” the orca who never actually managed to get free.

Inching towards the end of this project, need to be strategic with the models I choose, you get that sometimes.

348: T-Rex Skeleton

| wonko

This is nuts, seriously NUTS. I started this model 2 weeks before exam block, and have been chipping away at it ever since:

This monolithic modular is Yoshino’s T-Rex Skeleton and I for one am totally impressed with the attention to design detail here. Firstly the overall proportions are correct – no mean feat as it is comprised of 21 A3-cut squares, each piece designed to slot together, each piece correct in relation to the others – wow.

If you carefully consider – the head is 2 pieces (top of skull and jaw), neck (snarly pleated sculpture) is 2 pieces, each arm/shoulder blade assembly is 1 piece, then the rib cage – 6 varying size/curvature ribs (1 piece each), pelvis (2 pieces), lovely long legs, bastard of a tail (5 segments, each took over an hour in itself).

I am really pleased with the result, and will probably work out a wire armature to run along the spine so it will stand. The school Science Department have expressed interest in displaying this beastie as I certainly have no where big enough – tail to nose it is over a metre long and nearly as high.

This has taken an age to fold – each piece was a complex model in itself and the instructions were only in Japanese – no useful annotations and annoyingly a different symbolism than is conventional to describe the steps – grrrr. I had to ask the Japanese Department to see if there were even any clues as to the suggested paper size of whether it was stated if the paper all had to be the same size – in the end I GUESSED it probably was.

Still, it worked, and wow, no I mean WOW – this guy is amazing.

347: Tree Topper

| wonko

So I was putting up the tree again this year and remembered we had nothing to put atop it:

I remembered an “angel” designed originally by Neal Elias, reworked by gabriel Vong that I had put in the “must try this sometime” pile, so set about folding it.

A nice figurative angel, hands clasped in prayer, lovely wings and a nifty gusset at the back to allow you to insert some foliage at the pointy end of your tree.

You should try this, it is actually fairly straight forward. I had a sheet of gold metallic paper (but wrapping paper would make the fold even easier) and bent it laboriously (it was almost card, so the folds around the hands, shoulders etc were hard going – thank goodness for fingernails as my finger tips are bruised and sore from the continued 365 onslaught).

Atop the tree she is lovely – this is an A4-cut square, prolly a little big for our small tree but ideal for a larger one.