Digging through my stash, I found a large sheet of yellow Crumpled VOG paper. Remembering I had never done a presentation fold of Brian Chan’s “WALL-E”, I knew I had found the right model for the paper:

The original character – a (Disney) Pixar masterpiece is a lovely little character piece with one of the most expressive robots ever on film. The design is intense, eats paper like nothing else but results in features that are instantly recognisably “WALL-E”.

Squaring up the paper, I managed a 60cm square from the sheet, cleaving wisps of 3 sides and a strip off the bottom. The strip was later used to coat some armature wire to keep him in shape – the model has some lovely deep pleats that allow you to hide structural supports to give the model some longevity.

VOG paper is particularly great for super-complex models because it is really tough, takes creases well and the texture persists, even after extensive working.

Wrestling to the base, using a mixture of boxpleat and 22.5 strategies, we end up with the major design feature – a naturally corrugated set of tracks, a box-like body and eyes on a stalk. I will probably continue to re-model the eyes as they are everything in terms of conveying emotion with this character.

The hands are also cute, and I decided to go for a friendly wave, a nod to his largely solitary life and desperation for contact.

I really enjoyed the process of folding this model – one of the models slated for work in the recent gallery open workshops I was an artist in residence with 4 other paper artists recently.