Origami designer Fergus Curry shared with me the diagrams for his Rhombic Triacontahedon, I was determined to give it a try:
30 squares in 5 colours, some clever unit folding later and I had the bits needed to construct this little gem. A positive tab-pocket mechanism, some strategic placement of colours and pretty soon you have a lovely sphere made of rhombi. [edit]: A friend (JZag) pointed out this is a D30 (DnD reference there) – nice and nerdy.
Continue readingWhen I saw the folded form I thought there must be some trickery here:
All I had access to is the crease pattern (CP) for this model, and, given I am trying to develop my CP solving skills I thought it fair game to give it a try.
Based on a 16×16 grid, some strategic box pleating and an ingenious colour change we have a classic music stand, 3 shapely legs and a piece of sheet music that is a different colour to the stand – magic.
I like this model a lot – it just sort of coalesced in to a successful model for me, although the first fold was on paper that was same both sides but I could see the potential for colour change and had to fold it in duo paper,
A few years back, I was gifted a portfolio of amazing vintage paisley paper by the Albions. I have held back folding it until I found something that would do it justice:
I pulled a sheet (there are over a dozen different paisleys in the folio), it opened up into a large sheet that I derived a way of dividing it into 30 equal squares – the basis on this kusudama.
This is a stellated dodecahedron, with lovely ridges, pentagonal faces and a wonderfully tactile design. 30 modules, based on 60 degree division, wonderfully deep pockets and positive lock, initially it is easy to put together.
You can have a go yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzeQBFay8NY
There were 4 hours allocated for the teaching of “Dog”, we finished in about 3 so Satoshi decided to teach a simpler model that he said was the most “realistic cat” he knew – modelled after his own pet apparently:
A simple fold sequence, we have the back of a cat staring intensely away from us, just wonderful. I have seen other session attendee’s models where they added details to the front of the cat (when I re-fold this I may too).
Again, the sequence was fluid, and a joy to follow along with, interjected with banter and casual observations by the master – such a privilege to have been able to fold along.
The star drawcard (for me) was an opportunity to fold along live with Satoshi Kamiya – he taught 2 models and I managed to follow along with the broken English, translator and zoom limitations:
The sequence of most of Kamiya’s models are delicious – so natural, logical and a totally different/unique style.
This is a generic dog, different to the one most recently published and I can see how you could vary the base to get really nicely shaped dogs of many types – this one is a little “husky” like.
I really felt lucky to have been present, I am a bit of a fanboi, but it was intense and wonderful. Matching the master, fold for fold was a rare pribilege. I must re-fold this (as I am not really happy with the head I folded).
