fantasy

1119: Pocket Godzilla

| wonko

Leafing through one of the origami books I helped edit, I came across a cutey little “Godzila”esque model I had not folded:

Designed by Oriol Esteve, from his book “Fold with the Flow”, this charming little Chibimonster seems ready to terrorise Tokyo and dodge nukes as the ineffectual army fights back.

I used to watch monster movies with a passion, and the old “guy in a rubber suit” versions were terrifying as a kid, but the whole Godzilla franchise seems to go on and on with re-imaginings and various levels of tech in the VFX often getting in the way of the story, at least these days.

I had a 25cm square of blue metallic paper (I think from a sample pack from Origami-shop) that was light blue on the reverse, so decided to torture it into shape. The book suggests Kami, and thinner paper would have made some of the moves less thick, but I think I like him chunky. It is a fun design, starting with one of Oriol’s much-used bases. I like that both the eyes and the back spikes are colour changed. The proportions are nice and I also like that he free-stands because the centre of gravity has been considered in his pose.

1110: Origami World Marathon 4

| wonko

I have recently completed the mammoth 50hr+ live fold-along festival called The Origami World Marathon. I folded as many as I could physically attend, and it is a super rare privilege to be actually taught by such world class designers.

I managed about 14 models live, slept some and can complete those missed because, as part of the purchased ticket I gain access to video tutorials from the designers for the next year – win, win.

Continue reading →

1107: WALL-E

| wonko

Although (technically) a re-fold, the last time I attempted to fold this I had a partial crease pattern and a broken incomplete set of instructions in Russian, and just muddled along. I am not sure the resultant model even looked like Wall-E, but I was happy to sort of nut out a scheme for making his tracks.

I stumbled across a set of partial diagrams by “Tosummerny” in Chinese that seemed to surface more of the actual process, so decided I had to have another go.

I went big – 90cm square – seems excessive …but … I have another exhibition pending and thought this might make a good display piece if it ended up tidy enough.

The diagrams clarify the construction of the pleats necessary to form the main body, and how they cleanly articulate to make the beautifully treaded tracks, and also simplified what I had in my previous attempt mangled together to form the eyes.

Continue reading →

1106: PBS Scorpion

| wonko

One of the benefits of working as part of the editing team on an origami book is that you get to see models before they are in the wild:

This is my test fold of Peter Bucan-Symons new “Scorpion”, a delicious model with a fun challenging fold sequence.

I folded this from a 60cm square of black/natural duo kraft paper (some of my dwindling stock of Ikea duo – WHY won’t they stock this anymore????).

Continue reading →

1105: En Garde

| wonko

It is a wonderful thing when designers share their processes, crease patterns and diagrams. Boice Wong is one that readily shares the CPs of his amazing designs, and when I saw “Sword and Shield V2”, I knew I had to give it a go:

Although I have been folding for decades, most of what i have folded has been from DIAGRAMS (step by step folding guides). By far the MAJORITY of origami out there does not exist as diagrams, but a larger proportion exist as CPs (crease patterns). I have been, over the last few years, working on my crease pattern solving skills.

This model is based on Boice’s 24 grid CP, and the collapse is relatively straight forward. Sometimes CPs give you crease orientations (red=mountain, blue=valley), sometimes not. The skill comes with deciding which creases to impose first as part of the collapse. Sometimes it does not matter, most it does, some you can derive based on “knock on effects” on one crease that causes the orientation of a sequence of subsequent creases. Sometimes it is pure witchcraft.

Continue reading →