393: Six Intersecting Pentagonal Stars (SIP)

When I first saw this thing on Happy Folding I knew I was destined to try it:

This glorious modular designed by Francesco Mancini uses a unit similar to a Frances Ow 60 degree unit but in a very different way to make chevron-shaped modules that lock together to form pentagonal stars.

The tricksey part is to then nestle the stars so they are inside each other, weaving one inside and outside every other star – thank goodness I chose a different colour for each star else I have no idea how I would have managed to work out what strut went where in the construction.

I am quite chuffed (and a little relieved to be honest) with the result as I attempted to construct it 7 times before successfully working out what went where. Fully formed it is quite stable and rigid – it was everything but that during construction however making it very awkward indeed.

Lovely stellar structure suitable for display.

392: “Snapper” Yew

Ladies and Gentleffolk, can I introduce to you Master Bartok Yew, “Snapper” to his closest acquaintances

20120509-212015.jpg
“Snapper” is one of the first ever tourist gnomes, traveling far and wide. His memory is probably the third worst ever recorded and so always travels with his camera (hence the nickname which describes his habits of continually happy-snapping

20120509-212242.jpg
Young Bartok was folded in Yorkshire, from a square of wrapping paper left over from … Well … Wrapping. He was achieved with no glue or other aid, but I did add a button to keep his jacket closed tidily (dress sense he picked up from Pierre, a distant relative).

The camera is an invention and, given more time and paper would be much more stable. Together he looks like a real tourist

20120509-212613.jpg
…and I should know what a tourist looks like, I have been spending 6 weeks being one.

Bartok was last seen mooching around in Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, probably sponging off some unsuspecting family for board and lodging. We hope his well and does not run out o ffilm any time soon.

391: Pierre Mâché en Francais

….Puis je vous présenter Monsier Pierre Mâché, my first internationally folded gnome:

20120422-101343.jpg
You see, we are currently in Paris, on a vacation that has been in the planning stages for years, and we had an astonishing meal at a local restaurant Les Enfants Perdus, and I noticed they topped their tables with a square of sueded cream colored paper.

20120422-163405.jpg
In my best French, I asked pour Le paper sur la table and they gave me a fresh one to fold. The paper was stiff but really strong, so I was able to model this guy a lot more than I usually can, or maybe I am just getting better.

20120422-101808.jpg
I like how his posture worked out, he definitely looks French and is gesturing as if to express exasperation that he cannot understand us odd Australians, we get that a lot.

20120422-101932.jpg
We will leave him as a gift to our hosts here in Paris, the apartment we have rented from them is wonderful, very well appointed, comfortable and essential to us keeping going each busy day.

Au revoir Paris, our first visit has been magical

20120422-102137.jpg

390: Flying wallaby

As a travelling Australian, the “flying kangaroo” is something I wish I could afford to travel using, but we are using the the “flying wallaby”:

I decided that trying to memorise a kangaroo fold would be a good idea for an aussie abroad, and what better than the kangaroo by Robert Lang from the book “Origami Zoo”.

On making, then re-making it I am convinced that this model is much more like a wallaby than a roo, but it is a lovely form none the less.

I can now fold this from memory, but it is very dense and requires thin paper else it gets bunchy early. Will practise it and hopefully, leave a stream of them all over Europe.

389: Kusudama Dafina

I saw Tadashi Mori demonstrating a Kawasaki Rose-based modular and thought I would give it a whirl:

Having failed miserably every other attempt to fold a Kawasaki Rose, I was chuffed to succeed this time.

I want to say I will fold this again – it took an age and although I was impressed with the rose, the modular attachments (tabs and pockets) did not positively hold it together (I cheated in the end and stapled them together).

Each rose is a masterpiece of box pleating prep work followed by a beautiful spiral collapse. Happy to be finished it tho.

388: The Lion King

…now many of you know I am travelling overseas real soon. Whilst in London, we decided to take our pick of shows playing at London’s West End, and decided on “The Lion King”:

I then got part way through the fold and posed a development shot on Fakebook for people to try and guess what the model would end up as. I am pleased to say that Janet C was the successful guesser.

This model is lovely – a real mask, folded with a larger bit of paper it would be a person-sized thingy, neato with design details. Designed by Victoria Serova (with instructions in Russian which made it an interesting challenge), it has a lovely 3D muzzle, sleepy feline eyes and potential for modelling a lovely mane.

Next time I fold this I think I will rough up the mane a little, still, very happy with this as a first fold.

387: Happy Wedding Anniversary

April 2, a special day that Jo and I celebrate our Wedding anniversary:

So I thought a schmaltzy, sentimental origami card was in order, so fashioned an origami “valentine” designed by Robert Lang (from “Origami Design Secrets”, a fantastic book). I had not tried this model and wondered how it was possible to sculpt both arrow and heart from the one square of paper – lovely design. I then added a pair of interlocking rings designed by Jeremy Schafer and voila.

Some shiny cardstock, a printed parchment inner with verse and greeting and it is done.

Much to celebrate, some of that celebration will be done overseas. Win Win.

386: Dimple Ball

Looking for a neat, colourful use for a batch of poor quality origami paper I had, I stumbled across a modular dimpled sphere:

The paper cracked and spilt in ugly ways, so I had a good wrestle to actually construct this. Interestingly, when complete it became quite rigid and strong but prior to the last few modules were wrangled into place, it was floppy and kept unfolding inconveniently.

The result is spherical, with lovely pentagonal dimples, with modules centred in fives, meeting in threes – lovely application of maths.

I must look for modules that differ in the basic 32 module sphere, and also for one whose modules are more positively connected. This one is, however, randomly beautiful.

You can have a try of this yourself – go here for instructions

385: Beer Mug/TeaCup

… so I was thinking through a waterproof container, being inspired by a paper cup I dismantled from a water cooler, and came across this design:

Working with an A4 page, and inscribing, via a simple half-third intersection and some simple geometric construction, an octagonal base, sides radiating from it and pleats to tuck away the excess paper, a container was born.

Because the base was centred 1/3 of the way down the page, there was, by design, enough paper to fashion a rather nice handle.

Very happy with this – rare that a design in my head so closely matches what later manifests on paper, and I might get around to diagramming it someday – the basic form however is pretty obvious in retrospect.

By varying the size of the base you get a taller or squatter container. By flaring the radiating sides, the container is more conical than cylindrical – all interesting. Mastering the pleats necessary to make the handle is interesting and as an added bonus the ends tuck away locking in position inside a facet gusset – neat indeed.

I trialled it in clear plastic, scoring the creases with a stylus before reinforcing them – tough going actually as the plastic had memory and continued to try to unfold. Interestingly, the finished article was waterproof and strong enough to be held by the handle while containing water so it is functional as well as pretty beautiful.

I know a gnome that needs this, so the next step was to make one to size and put it in his hands:

Squiffy now has his pint.

384: Squiffy “Woombye” Larch

Ladies and Gentlefolk, may I introduce young Squiffy Larch, “Woombye” to his friends:

During a mad weekend, we visited Woombye Pub for a fantastic lunch and I noticed they put on their square tables, a beautiful big square of brown paper.

Naturally I put 2 and 2 together and got 7, and decided it needed to be folded into a gnome, and Squiffy was born.

The paper is amazing, takes folds well, is tough and the resultant gnome is the largest I have folded so far.

Quite happy with the face, he has a lovely grin amongst a full beard, noble nose and a quaint, slightly sozzled look in his eyes. His hands were crying out for something drink-related so I invented a beer stein and all was good.

Will organise to send Squiffy to Woombye – he belongs in a bar. He is very happy (that will be the pint he is working on) to be joining the ranks of the “other” seven dwarfs.

383: Slinky

Now I am a fan of a simple but effective modular, and this one is a lot of fun:

Modelled after a spring-slinky, designed with skill by Jo Nakashima, it stretches, falls and steps like the real thing.

Using remarkably simple modules, each from a small square, the structure begins to behave when there is sufficient mass in it to be propelled by its own momentum.

I like this model a lot – it was a fun way to while away an exam supervision and the construction method was simple. I ended up making over 50 modules before it started behaving correctly but even this feat did not take very long.

Give it a try, you know you want to…

382: Self Made Man – Revisited

I was determined to test whether my first fold of this nightmarish, but charming, fold was merely a fluke or not, so I set about folding it from a 3×5 cut from an A1 sheet.

The geometry for this model is amazing, and the challenge is to only put in the folds that are necessary to achieve the collapse – an interesting challenge indeed as construction lines, preliminary constructions and fold-flow ons are difficult to control with such large format paper.

I love the result, given this paper was thinner than the original #365 fold, the features and structure are much more considered and I think he has a lot more character in his face and pose.

This is one of my favourite folds from last year, and now I know it was not a fluke, I can fold it with confidence when I need to.

He is now on proud (temporary) display in the Library, with a suitable verse before him.

Charity

Well it is official, as many origami auction payments as I think are likely to come in are, well … in.

The grand total:

$904.10

That is pretty awesome, right?

That meant that today I paid $452 to each of Medicines Sans Frontiers and Red Cross.

Thank you thank you thank you to ALL of you who got involved with the 365 auction and bought my twisted bits of paper – you all helped support causes I think do a lot of good in our world.

All over red rover – time to move on.

381: Rodin’s Reader

It is little known (partially because it is blatantly not true) that Rodin, prior to sculpting his masterpiece “The Thinker” had an altogether different idea:

Our school library is celebrating the National Year of reading by exploring a different theme each month – March is “think” so I put 2 and 2 together and got 17.3.

Based on Neal Elias’s box pleat, this little model is cute with a Brill “Spelling Book” on his lap.

Will not be around for the next couple of themes so this will have to do for a little while

380: Project Davros

I had this idea in my head that is should be possible to fold a DALEK (you know, that improbable plunger-wielding arch nemesis of Dr Who) from a single sheet of paper:

I began over a two week period to explore the morphology of a Dalek, to come to the conclusion that it is most certainly possible, and that this attempt is very nearly it.

I decided to start with an A2 sheet, figuring that it would be bent in half eventually and curved to make the recognisable armature and leaving paper for eye, manipulators and a nice domed head. Numerous trial scraps of paper were mangled to test various collapse/crinkle ideas that in the end informed the final shaping. The odd shape, the necessary texturing (bumps are essential, apparently, to Daleks), the position of the eye stalk in relation to the plunger/laser hand thingies proved very troublesome with this shape paper and, in retrospect, it would have been better to start with a square – live and learn I guess.

I learnt a lot about myself in this fold – resisting the urge to set a crease is HARD, regretting a misplaced crease later is worse. I found I could, in my head, envisage something and then create it within the limitations of paper fairly faithfully. A LOT of maths-type thinking went in to the original sheet division and that both helped and hindered in the final model as I found taking the highly geometric shapes and making them more organically round was very challenging.

In the end this is NOT a great dalek, it is however a fantastic start. Should I attempt this again I now know more about the final shape to plan better for it – I assumed, you see, that it would sort of just “sort itself out” – this was far from true – much time was spent looking at the mess I had made and working out how to make it less messy (or just hide it and deny it was there).

The final model is not pure origami – given the time and paper torsion, I had to help some parts stay together with little buts of stickey tape on the inside – some of those fine pesky pleats splay over time I found. With different paper (tissue foil for instance) the folds would stay folded a lot better I would guess.

Given this is my FIRST FOLD of this design, and I was working to designs in my head, it was very satisfying. Should I attempt it again I would do it slightly differently, arrange things on the sheet with the final shaping in mind a little better. I think Davros would be proud of my efforts at resurrecting the master race however. Good work if you bothered to read this far, say HI to your mum for me.