fantasy

Showing Off

| wonko

Our school has large display cases. I have kilograms of origami at home, in showboxes, tidy tubs, cupboards, garbage bags and display cases … one thing led to another:

library display 2019

My aim with this display to to show the variety of forms modern Origami takes, from traditional, figurative, geometry and abstract. Additionally I have included 14 different dragons, a current fascination – can you find them all?

I feature some of my favourite pieces, designed by legends such as Satoshi Kamiya, Robert Lang, Eric Domaine, Francis Ow, Ronald Koh, Kade Chan, Eric Joisel, Brian Chan, Jason Ku and more.

Continue reading →

962: Ryu Jin 2.1 – Head

| wonko

In a bid to calm down and relax after a brutal week at work, I took a 60cm square of red/natural Ikea Kraft paper and started folding… and folded, and folded and folded.

Ryujui 1.2 head

I have been lured back into the fold (as it were) of Ryu Jin folders (nerds who attempt to fold Satoshi Kamiya’s devilishly difficult dragon series). Having already folded a 1.0, 1.2 and 3.5, I noticed that I had never attempted a 2.1.

Ryujui 1.2 head views and detail

For the uninitiated, the numbers indicate refinements, with the 1.0 being vaguely dragon like and the 3.5 (the culmination of this design process) being the most astonishingly detailed design imaginable.

Continue reading →

961: Drogon, The Black Dragon

| wonko

The lure of Satoshi Kamiya’s Dragon set is alluring. Recently I was invited into a community that celebrates the RyuJin series. Having folded a 1.0 and a 3.5, I thought it time to fold another:

Drogo, Satoshi Kamiya's RyuJin 1.2

This is the 1.2 – a refinement of the 1.0 and I had fun shaping the head as per a guide by Daniel Brown – a luscious and generously shared photodiagram set that I really enjoyed following.

My 1.2 is actually based on almost an identical crease pattern to the 1.0 I folded back in 2013, but back then I had NO IDEA how to shape it, and sort of made up shit as I went along.

Continue reading →

945: David Nudd’s Box-Pleat Sword

| wonko

As part of a weekly challenge on the Sydney Origami Inc facebook page, I had a go at David Nudd’s box-pleated sword:

david nudd's sword

A basic 16×16 grid has a few extra short diagonals layed in before a collapse that is fairly straight forward to give the basic morphology of the base.

david nudd's sword CP
Continue reading →

There be dragons, lots of them …

| wonko

I must confess to being in love with the process of folding, less with the final product. I have kept a small proportion of my folds, but there are some that I just cannot part with:

This collection of dragons makes me dizzy, and is a small selection of the dragons I have folded over the years. Hundreds of hours of folding are on display here – literally hundreds.

More importantly, nearly everything on the table is NOT to first fold – certainly they are the first “acceptable” fold I managed of each model – some were folded MANY times before something “acceptable” was reached.

The moral of this cautionary tale is two-fold: effort is it’s own reward and mistakes are opportunities to learn. If only the current generation understood these simple principles.