A work colleague is going on Long Service Leave – lucky bastard! It appears he had no end of trouble buying a camera for travelling, so I thought I would make him one as an hooroo gift:
Designed by Won Park, this little SLR Camera is tiny, but has a viewfinder, winder lever, shutter button, pop-up flash and lovely lens all sticking out of a lovely boxy body.
Genius design, if tiny and torturous, I hope he likes it. Continue reading
Procrastination, thy name is Wonko!
I had some time, and some coloured paper, so decided to try Daniel Kwan’s lovely geometrical modular:
Simple units, reminiscent of Frances Ow’s 60 degree unit interlock to form one, then two etc triangular prisms – choice of nice bold colours make this a real charmer. Continue reading
The international sign of Peace is a Dove holding an olive branch in its beak
The world could use a little peace.
As part of our student end of term send-off, our littlest students (year 5) had prepared origami(ish) doves with messages of peace, to be sent to places where the wishes will be appreciated. Continue reading
…so I am folding this crazy big dragon at the moment – insane 2mx2m square to make something ridiculously time-consuming. A work colleague of my wife gave me a pair of raggedy USD$1 greenbacks and asked if I could do anything with them:
I ironed the notes to crisp them up and flatten the worse of the existing crumples (they are old notes, one nearly falling apart) and began bending a Won Park creation I had been itching to try.
The fold is very dense, helped and hindered (in equal measure) by the robust note paper, and the level of detail here is nuts – the head has 3 sets of horns, eyes, 2 fangs, bottom jaw. Each foot has a set of claws, the body has dorsal spikes and the tail has an ornate tuft. Continue reading
After much care and attention, diligently following expert lessons (courtesy of MrOrigami’s Daniel Brown), I have managed to successfully navigate lessons 1-11 in what promises to be an ever intensifying journey towards understanding the whole model. This is PART 2 of a previous post. Part 3 also exists.
Along the way I have learned a LOT about myself – patience is it’s own reward. If at first you do not succeed, try, try and try again (something I needed to do for lesson 11 – which I folded 4 times until I got it right, each attempt taking me 12ish hours)
I can see why Satoshi Kamiya (the astonishingly talented designer) has not folded lots of these – the detail (and there is LOTS of details here, most you cannot see) needed to let the paper sit correctly whilst transitioning between elements is breaking my brain.
So far, I have learned elements of the design in isolation:
The lessons after this appear to tackle larger and more complex chunks – the aim to get all pieces to co-exist on the same sheet.
Interestingly, although it is time consuming, I am finding the process fascinating, each piece gains a sort of momentum that propels me on to finish it and get it right, and I look forward to the next part with a sort of morbid curiosity.
I bought some WIDE Kraft online (90cmx30m) and, depending how it behaves, intend to laminate 2 strips together to make a square nearly 2m x 2m as my first attempt of the whole model – no idea if that will be big enough, we shall see.
The Lessons continue. Continue reading
On receiving a lovely hard cover copy of “Extreme Origami” by Won Park from Book Depository (wow, how do they offer those prices, delivery times and no postage???) I naturally skipped to the back and looked for the nastiest fold to try:
This model is insane – I chickened out folding it on notes because the pre-creasing into 32nds with my fat clumsy fingers was not possible I thought so I scaled up and used plain paper for my first fold. Continue reading
There is a branch of Origami that I have not explored because I live in Australia and our bank notes are no longer paper, they are plastic:
Moneygami, an exacting discipline that uses USD paper notes, a particular format where all notes are the same size and still made of paper is fascinating for a bunch of reasons.
The accuracy needed to tease so much detail out of such a small rectangle of tough paper is an art, and Won park is an astonishingly talented designer that designed this fish – a lovely catfish/Koi Carp.
Mind buggering (and finger bleeding) details include a luscious fantail, scales, gills, fins, a majestic head with EYES that are part of the “greenback” printed design – wow!. Continue reading
Often I find highly technical folding is mentally cleansing – that complete absorption in meticulous detail lets you lose yourself:
Jason Ku is an engineer and origami artist unlike any other – having marveled at his bicycle, I was determined to find something else of his to try.
I had dismissed this fold, featured in a Tanteidan convention book I peruse periodically as too hard, but given my skill level has raised (attributable directly to my structured wrestling with Kamiya’s Ryu Jin), I thought I would give it a try.
To my astonishment, the folds came quite easily, breathtaking collapses and “unfold everything and re-fold it this way” moments seem just to work themselves out and the result is pleasing to me at least. Continue reading
I want an origami rooster (in red) to live somewhere in our new kitchen, so set about exploring rooster form with a pair of masters and their individual approaches to rooster form:
I “warmed up” with an Eric Joisel “Le Coq” – a fold I had tried years ago and not really mastered so I patiently and carefully folded from a 60cm square a lovely rendition (well, in my eyes at least). the Joisel model is economical with paper and seems to focus on the feet and tail, with an almost caricature head comb and waffle.
I then, after a cup of tea, girded my loins and set about folding Satoshi Kamiya’s Rooster. Using the same size piece of paper, there are hundreds of steps, many of which were astonishingly complicated 3d collapses that had originally scared me away from trying it – indeed 2 years ago I would not have been able to fold it at all.
There is much to admire with Kamiya’s vision of the bird – body and head with comb/wattle are amazing, full wings and a suggestion of a tail are wonderful, legs and feet seem (to me at least) almost an after thought, although the legs do have spurs and the right number of toes, I found them less generous than they needed to be for the proportions of the model – the poor chook would not be able to walk or perch. Even posing it I had great difficulty propping it up on the little spindly toes. It appears to have “barbie” syndrome – you know, Barbie the doll has impossible proportions, right? Continue reading
In desperate need of some occupational therapy after a punishing term, I looked for a “no brainer” fold to calm my racing brain – instead I found this:
The CLO Kusudama, designed by Isa Klein was beautifully demonstrated in a video by Jo Nakashima, and I decided to give it a go. Continue reading
Leafing through “Origami Sequence” by Quentin Trollip, I am struck by the quality and quantity of amazing designs packed into that book, and the range of skills his models brings to the table.
There is this house, at work, that has a Timber Wolf as their house mascot, so I have been on the look out for one to fold (I assumed someone would ask me to have a go, that never really happened, so I did it anyway).
This wolf is clearly howling, there is much movement and drama inherent in the pose, and I placed a “moon” within howling distance in some shots because it seemed to need it. Continue reading
While browsing an origami forum I frequent, I came across a modular that I had not tried, based on 120 degree units:
I have a stack of oddments (the ends cut off A4 sheets when squaring them up) and decided to see if they were close enough to the right size for this module (it called for 2 1/5 x 1 rectangles, my odments are more 2.5×1) Continue reading
I am honored to have been allowed to learn how to fold Satoshi Kamiya’s Ryujin 3.5 by an extraordinarily talented folder who goes under the name “MrOrigami”.
When finished, it should look like this:
He sends me lessons, I must complete them neatly and photo-evidence back to him before he sends me the next lessons.
This blog post chronicles my progress so far. It is a long and winding road towards folding the whole thing from one square of paper – that road consists of a myriad of skills, techniques and components all designed to tuck away 70%+ of the sheet revealing just the dragonny bits.
The Crease Pattern is terrifying (but if you look closely you can see head, body in 2 sections, claws and tail … well, I can):
I hope I am skillful enough to learn how to fold it … we shall see. Explore PART 2 of this project. Continue reading
I am currently learning how to fold Satoshi Kamiya’s Ryu Jin 3.5. As part of that fold, “waterbomb tesselation” scales are made and shaped. I need practice so I am looking for scaley applications of this technique.
I remember ages ago folding Davor Vinko’s catfish and seeing a video by Jo Nakashima on how to incorporate scales into the body, so I adapted Jo’s technique so I could ‘pop’ scales running in the correct direction. Continue reading
I have long admired Sara Adams at Happy Folding as an inspirational folder and teacher.
Recently, she had a compentition (well, 5 in fact to celebrate 50k subscribers to her video channel), I entered and won – yay!
I recently received, by mail, all the way from Germany, a paper pack with some lovely papers to try
Much energetic folding will result from this gift, including a chance to try elephant hide, washi-deluxe and many more. Thank you Sara, you have made another Happyfolder 😛
