mammal

313: Monkey with Symbols

| wonko

Action models that work and look reasonable are few and far between, this is an exception:

Diagrammed (yet not credited to any particular designer) in Origami USA collection, this delightful model is a monkey holding a small set of symbols.

By tweaking the handle up and down, whilst holding the body, the arms flail and clap the symbols together – very cute indeed.

This is a compound figure – that is it is comprised of two pieces of paper folded separately and then locked together at the end – clever design really.

Why a symbol monkey? Why not!

312: Gerboa

| wonko

Now in arid areas of Australia life is hard. Some animals never drink, some come out an night, some live underground – the gerboa does all these things and more:

Sometimes called the “Kangaroo rat” because of its rather splendid tail and hoppy back legs, it has always fascinated me.

When I saw this model I knew I would have to try it – copy paper, to be honest, is a terrible media for this but I soldiered on and am actually very happy with this as a first fold.

An ingenious use of the bird base, I will fold this again – it is poseable, has lots of character and the most lovely feet and tail – very clever design.

307: White Rabbits (belated)

| wonko

Now I know it is not the start of the month, and I missed out on the pinch and the punch because of a horsey thing, but thought I should get in on the act of start of month eventually:

A nice, compact and fairly poseable rabbit. Quite happy with this, although I seem to have misplaced my first fold (completed at school whilst I should have been paying attention to an all important rap battle).

I am looking for new rabbits to try, suggestions welcome.

This one looks more like a hare, but I like the ears and tail, well designed models can be simple and small too.

306: Wolf Alarm

| wonko

At 5:30am every morning, the dog next door explodes in a flurry of barking and howling – I call this our “wolf alarm”:

I think it is in response to an early morning walker on the street beyond, regardless it wakes me from my light sleep and I struggle to return after the wolf alarm has gone off.

This nice model from Roman Diaz is a “Coyote” howling at the moon, but I think it looks like the mutt next door (well, at least in my head it does). happy with this as a first fold, would do it differently if I were to fold it again as the forming of the muzzle is very congested and could be done before hand I think.

305: Melbourne Cup

| wonko

I have had the privilege to fold many beautifully designed models over the course of this project – David Brill’s “Horse” is right up there with the best:

Wonderful proportions, amazing use of material, lovely face and ears, fantastic body, legs and tail – everything that is needed to look horsey infact.

Today apparently a horse race stops a nation – not sure why. I guess the nation is used to being stopped given the recent airline strike but no one celebrated that so -go figure.

Unusually, this model starts with an equilateral triangle – yeah, weird, right? Somehow from that shaped paper the designer manages to tease the right number of stickey outy bits and I, frankly, feel honoured to fold this one. I cut the largest equilateral triangle I could our of an A2 sheet, but bigger would have been better.

There are lots of places where variations in pose are possible, had I the time (and a HUGE selection of paper) I think a group of these would look beautiful. So glad, as a first fold, this model turned out so nice, given the heavy head cold I am currently drowning in.

303: Llopio’s Moment of Truth

| wonko

The croud erupts spontaneously with “Olé!” as Llopio narrowly dodges the bull calf’s first charge. His grandfather’s matador cap, too loose for him, slips and obscures his vision, there is an amateur swish of a cape as the bull’s developing horns pass too close for comfort, quick step out of the way and Llopio is finally a bullfighter.

This is “Llopio’s Moment of truth” – the reason I bought the British Origami Society’s compendium of Neal Elias figures. There is much to like in this complex box pleat. from one piece of paper emerges a Matador, Bull and the Cape that separates them.

I like how there is movement, you can sense the drama, a fitting end to my exploration of Neal Elias’ work. This fold is challenging, so much of the design is “mystery meat” where you just have to sort of “improvise” – you would not want to fold it much smaller, the manipulation of layers in the bodies is intense and fiddly and it is not immediately obvious what is going to be what until near the end.

Interestingly, only the matador is box pleated – unusually you torture 2 water bomb bases to get the bull and cape so this is a nice fusion between pure box pleating and free-form sculpture. Happy I have folded this, apparently if you fold it with duo paper the cape ends up being the alternate colour – wow.

301: Miyajima’s Bat

| wonko

When looking for a suitable model for Halloween, I sumbled across this delightful model from Noburu Miyajima:

The bat is a much maligned critter, particularly in the light of the Hendra Virus here is Queensland, but this model is lovely (in a batty sort of way)

An amazingly well designed model that makes good use of paper, the resultant model being not that much smaller than the original sheet yet containing surprising detail.

Lovely wings, cute little pot belly and legs, fantastic face and ears and those majestic wings – wow.

This is not my first fold – I almost screwed this up once at work but I wanted to get the head right (the original attempt was mutilated and torn),  so sue me 😛

300: Adam’s Llama

| wonko

Post 300 – looking back I am AMAZED I have only done one Llama:

This is Jim adams’ Llama, a tough fold really, not because there are any difficult techniques or numerous steps but because of the thicknesses of paper you end up working with – much more suited to thin paper (and not copy). Not really happy with the hind quarters – the tail is 12 layers thick, phew!

You too can have a go – it is not tricky: Jim Adams Llama

It was late, after a huge and busy day – 65 to go!!!

299: Platypus

| wonko

It is a little known fact that Australians MADE UP the Platypus to see who would be silly enought to believe in it:

Let’s face it – an aquatic, furry mammal that feeds it’s young milk in a pouch, after they hatch from eggs; duck-bill, webbed feet, beaver tail, “see” via electrical sonar through their nose; male with poisonous spines – LOL. No one would be sill enough to believe in that illogical Frankenstein-like collection of bits of other critters, surely.

I have only ever had second, or third-hand experience of a Platypus – NEVER seen one live so I have to rely on others’ account of them.

A relatively simple figurative fold – they cannot all be huge, quite happy with this – I can see large modelability in this figure. Could not work out who designed it, sorry – anyone advise?

292: Montroll’s Rhino

| wonko

I have been exploring the work of John Montroll, and came across this little beauty:

A lovely Rhino, dual horns, lovely ears and a splendid tail, I am impressed with the rhinocerosness of this design, you get a sense of the armor-plating, power and posture of the beast.

Some clever pre-folding and some interesting sink folds to tease stickey-outey bits from flat edges, and the collapse for the head is interesting indeed.

Happy with this as a first fold, my pick of the rhinos folded so far.

290: Dachshund

| wonko

Awoke with a banging headache, have laid low for most of the day, decided I needed something simple:

Little did I realise how un-simple this model was. Not hard, just lots of steps really and the end result is a lovely “sausage dog”.

John Montroll is a design genius, and this model uses his “dog base” to sculpt a rather nice dachshund from a square – lots of modelability, plenty of character.

Taken from his book “Origami Sculptures”, this is a keeper, hope you like him too. It uses a stretched variation of his dog base. Try it: sausage

Nice to see readers having a go. Here is Everett’s fold:everett

289: Satoshi’s Mammoth

| wonko

I decided today would be another Satoshi Kamiya model (working my way up to the ancient dragon you see) and so selected his Mammoth, figuring “how hard could that be?”:

LOL

Wow, no I mean WOW! So much technique packed into such a tiny package, resulting in a lovely little pachyderm.

There is much to love about this model – the curly tusks (think Manny from Iceage), hairy fringe above the eyes, the eyes, the woolly tummy, the cutsey tail, the strong 3d shoulders, toes etc.

This took an age – the exacting pre-creasing alone taking over 1.5 hours. there are some torturous collapses and a bunch of accordion pleats but in the end it looks like a mammoth, which is always a good thing.

I learnt a lot folding this, and am really relieved my first fold worked at all – seriously there were 3 junctures where I got up and walked away from it assuming I had stuffed it up – those terrifying moments in a diagrammed sequence when you get to an impossibly complicated stage and it then says now unfold it all and re-fold it a different way.

285: National Ride To Work Day

| wonko

I heard on teh radio this morning that it was National “Ride to Work” Day and narrowly avoided running over a flock of cyclists near the freeway entrance – it got me thinking what riding to work might be like:

I had a model I was looking for an excuse to try, and initially tried it on paper smaller than recommended (a 2×1 rectangle cut from an A3 sheet) only to find it sort of worked in miniature scale, but decided it needed to be bigger. Our school art department has this paper designed for lithography, thin, light, lovely.

I cut a rectangle 1m x 50cm and this is the resulting fold, quite magnificent if tiny given the huge bit of paper it started as. Quite wonderful if I must say so myself. Designed by David Brill, this masterpiece has much to love – the horse (or more correctly pony) is very horsey, and the integrated rider looks like he is riding – very clever indeed.

I was trapped at work, waiting for a meeting so had a little time to kill – so glad I killed it with this. this scale model lets me build character into the elements, the rider’s knees and elbows, alert horse ears and a mouth. The designer apologized for the thin front legs but I am prepared to overlook that minor detail – bravo Mr Brill!

284: Seated Koala

| wonko

Charming folds are charming whether they take 6 hours or 12 minutes, this is a charming fold:

A figurative koala, seated lazily – lovely rounded rump, flat nose and fluffy ears, not bad for under 20 creases.

Busy day, some of the work I did was mine, you get that.

275: Moo Cow

| wonko

It is a well known fact that I am a little obsessed with all things Cow. I used to have a plush cow (called Terry the Moo) but I loaned her to a student who cared about her less than I do and now she is lost:

A paper replacement is no real substitute but this little beauty is easily the most lovely paper cow I have seen so far.

Taken from a book by Roman Diaz “Origami for Interpreters”, there is much to admire about the ingenious design – a full set of curled horns, lovely pendulous ears, a fantastic rounded muzzle and face, strong shoulders, cute swishy tail and general cow-ness.

Folded from an A3-cut square, the proportions and fiddlyness is just about right and amazingly it is possible to nurse copy paper through this fold – the head was the most problematic and likely to split asunder, obviated by rounding the central axis rather than attempting to bend all those layers into a sharp crease.

Very happy with this model – it is a keeper and i will fold it again – I can imagine a paddock full of them, all slightly different as the model is poseable as well – bravo Mr Diaz, I am in awe of your design.