1004: Baby Yoda

I, like many of you eagerly awaited the Disney “Star Wars Story” The Mandalorian.

Andrés Lozano's Baby Yoda

WARNING – SACRILEGE: It started as an off-planet spaghetti western (faithful right down to the soundtrack), but quickly (for me at least) degenerated into the “baby yoda show”, garnished with some impenetrable Mando law and totally impractical helmet decisions.

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991: 2019-nCoV

Human Corona Virus is in the news, the news is alarming:

nCoV macquette

It is difficult to know the extent of the emergency, the effectiveness of treatment, the vector of infection, the spread and infection rate, the facts.

Social media and websites masquerading as “news” agencies love a good headline, and this mixed with Survivor in the jungle, celebrity red carpets, sham impeachment, Corona Virus “influencers” on instagram and fad diets makes navigating the facts difficult.

Public warnings and travel bans aside, what constitutes a pandemic? What is the appropriate response?

I took a 3×1 rectangle of white/natural Ikea Kraft and … well … doodled and came up with an all too familiar image – a face-masked regular person. In an odd bout of synchronicity, Sebastian Limet (@sebl) had the same idea. His fold, as usual has lots of character.

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990: They come at night … mostly

I will admit to being a sci-fi nerd, few movies did it for me like the original “Alien” movie, directed by Ridley Scott, designed by Hans Reudi Geiger.

The truly original mixture of a genuinely terrifying xenomorph, claustrophobic and grimy working space ship and stellar cast makes the movie, at least in my mind, perfect.

Donny_Origami's facehugger

Prior to that, space was clean (painfully white and tidy, according to the Star Wars, Blakes7, Flash Gordon and Dr Who visions), in Alien gear looked used, people were pissed off and tired, and we were introduced to a much loved and never duplicated alien.

Donny_Origami's facehugger attack

H.R. Geiger imagined a life-cycle – from egg, to facehugger (this beastie) that implants an embryo deep in a host, chest burster through to adult killing machine. Scarily insectoid, acid for blood, no eyes, perfect.

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971: Bro-bot 2019

The last few months a lot of my free time has been consumed by supporting a team of students as they prepare for a robotics competition:

brobot - Robot by Shunsuke Inoue

Yesterday was the Queensland finals of the First Technology Challenge (FTC), and our team did really well. They designed, built and programmed a robot, affectionately known as “BROBOT”, coming second in the state.

I could not be prouder of the team, so decided they needed a souvenir. This is the cutest little robot I could find, designed by Shunsuke Inoue, and I am astonished I have not blogged this fold before, it is such a fun fold.

scale - Robot by Shunsuke Inoue

You take a square, divide it into 1/16th grid, then boxpleat the bjebus out of it to tease antennae, eyes, arms, legs and a lovely little stubby body.

I hope they like their award.

Showing Off

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.

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