creepy crawly

78: Lang’s Butterfly

| wonko

Although the wing-span of this model is quite large, for an A4 square-based model, the formation of the body using this paper was torturous at best.

I am very happy, as a first-fold, to get something even vaguely butterfly shaped from this complex design. Having folded it once, I think I could do it much better now I know what goes where.

Robert lang is a master, even though I think this butterfly looks more like a moth (particularly the body placement), it has 2 spikey antennae and a meaty body that seem quite natural.

I sat for 1/4 hour just trying to collapse the base, the valley and mountain folds seemed not to make sense until, when ready to hand in the towel and admit defeat it just sort of… worked. Photocopy paper is lousy as a medium for these types of models, it is just too coarse and there were many moments when bending the model that I fully expected the paper to give. Anyway, 78 down, only 287 to go….

57: Grasshopper

| wonko

Now I first found a partially incomplete PDF of this model and thought that it, for the most part made sense:

Little did I realise that the important parts (head, legs, abdomen) were not actually explained so I … improvised. It is an ingenious re-working of the frog base – the same one that I taught my tutor group, with some twisting and tweaking to make extra limbs – nice to remember when next I feel inventive.

Mightily pleased with the result but it is some serious paper torture – A4 page twisted, crimped and bent down to make a model that is barely 5cm long – my reference pad (underneath) is sideways to display the model.

I like it – realistic enough to make my daughter jump (she is afraid of them) so that says something at least.

49: Caterpillar on Leaf

| wonko

In 9 ICTE we are making a grubby movie using a caterpillar made up of head, body and tail segments, animated to do the whole wiggle thing:

students will then be put into a scene where they devastate someone’s vegie garden – nice, instructive and open ended.

This model is quite intense – one piece of paper, no cuts – unfortunately photocopy paper gave up the fight along the back of the grub, but it is demonstrative of form, critter and nicely sits on a fresh leaf contemplating lunch

… think Eric Carle’s “The very hungry Caterpillar” and you have an idea where I was going. You can have a go yourself: caterpillar_on_leaf

43: An Ant

| wonko

wow, no I mean WOW! This is a design that, on paper at least, looked impossible. Piotr Pluta designed a way of paper torture (involving 4 lots of 8-way accordion sinking) to extract 6 limbs and 3 body segments typical of an insect – quite honestly I was convinced it could not be done.

…so I cheated and gave parts of it a practice try first – sure I screwed it up (on what are unreasonable first-fold rules) but I learnt something about the successful fold. That said, I am mightily pleased with this one:

Photocopy paper does not withstand being bent so much – at the centre of the thorax (middle body segment) you can see the square’s centre point – a much creased and slightly frayed hole forming from bend fatigue, otherwise it held up remarkably well to a very difficult fold.

Underside and Side view detail

You can see the degree to which the paper has been massaged and tucked away to take an A4-cut square and as if my magic make all the requisite parts of the ant, right down to the mandibles and the puffed out abdomen.

You might like to have a go at this – it is not a beginners fold (and indeed there are aspects of it that I have still to master), but the design is ingenious and worth the time it takes to complete :  ant_diagram

31: Flutterby

| wonko

So I have begun Flash Animation with my year 9 ICTE students, and one of the orientation exercises is building a Butterfly, animating it and then making a scene with them in it – all interesting stuff and the inspiration for today’s model:

Akira Yoshizawa is a luminary in the Origami world, being a prolific inventor of folds many figurative, some very lifelike indeed. His butterfly is simple but lovely –  the body gets so thick that the copy paper split at the head, sadly, but the intention is there.