accordian fold

295: WALL-E

| wonko

I am an out and proud Pixar fan, they make movies where animation is almost amazing as the story telling and characterisation:

This is Brian Chan’s WALL-E – a lovely model that has taken me simply an age to complete for all sorts of reasons.

I started with a 52cm square (yep, over a half a meter) and a dodgy folding guide (as opposed to complete diagrams) in RUSSIAN and quite frankly I struggled with this one. I must find a way to buy a book that has this model in it, to see how Brian Chan suggests you fold it because I ended up improvising when there were no instructions that I could follow.

I walked away from this model 3 times, unfolded and re-folded the most complex parts a total of 4 times as I tried to make sense of the next stage. That said, I think the final model is quite remarkable. He is free standing (on stunning caterpillar tracks), has the most amazing head/eyes, is just under 10cm tall and I am totally chuffed with how he turned out.

That you can coax a square of paper into such an intricate and completely detailed model is nothing short of amazing – even if it did take me 5.5 HOURS – yes, that is actual folding elapsed time. Words fail me to express the delight when I finally realised he was going to work (having seriously contemplating abandoning the model twice).

This, for me, is a REAL achievement given how much I had to just work out for myself. Folded from my last piece of lithographic paper (thank you school art department). There was NO paper fatigue and that is astonishing given the lengths that the design requires you torture the paper. I must have some more.

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.

251: Infinity

| wonko

Now in my quest to fold 365 models, one a day for a whole year, it seems like I have been doing this forever already. Not having an infinite amount of time, I thought I wold fold an INFINITY in paper:

this is a rather ingenious pair of interlocking rings, the whole of which (hole … a ring joke there, lol) was folded from a single square, no cuts, no glue.

This ingenious fold is from Jeremy Shafers book “Origami to Astonish and Amuse” and is the first step towards achieving a snarly fold that features EIGHT rings (again, from ONE piece of paper)

A lovely accordion fold and some tidy end pleating and presto, an infinity symbol which I think is splendid. Even the wife did not believe it was only one sheet until I unfolded it and proved it was.

136: Starship Enterprise

| wonko

..Space, the final frontier. These are the journeys of the Starship Enterprise as she continues her 5 year mission …

Talk about “boldly going where no copy paper has been before”, this delightful little model is the result of wrestling an A3-cut square into something that is 17cm saucer to nacelle.

I really enjoyed torturing the paper to make this model, although paper fatigue and the sheer thicknesses in places caused it’s “structural integrity” to be compromised. I am pleased that it is relatively complete – it has a bridge rather vulnerably perched atop a nice saucer, 2 engineering marvels in nacelles attached rather nicely to the main hull, even a main deflector dish – so cool.

Why an “Enterprise”? Well, my mate and I finished BSG and will, tomorrow night, start the Original Star Trek episodes (Kirk, Spock etc) – both of us are healthily obsessed with all things Trek (we have seen it all, I used to even be able to speak Klingon!). I look forward to our time exploring sci fi so …. two to beam up Mr Scott…

43: An Ant

| wonko

wow, no I mean WOW! This is a design that, on paper at least, looked impossible. Piotr Pluta designed a way of paper torture (involving 4 lots of 8-way accordion sinking) to extract 6 limbs and 3 body segments typical of an insect – quite honestly I was convinced it could not be done.

…so I cheated and gave parts of it a practice try first – sure I screwed it up (on what are unreasonable first-fold rules) but I learnt something about the successful fold. That said, I am mightily pleased with this one:

Photocopy paper does not withstand being bent so much – at the centre of the thorax (middle body segment) you can see the square’s centre point – a much creased and slightly frayed hole forming from bend fatigue, otherwise it held up remarkably well to a very difficult fold.

Underside and Side view detail

You can see the degree to which the paper has been massaged and tucked away to take an A4-cut square and as if my magic make all the requisite parts of the ant, right down to the mandibles and the puffed out abdomen.

You might like to have a go at this – it is not a beginners fold (and indeed there are aspects of it that I have still to master), but the design is ingenious and worth the time it takes to complete :  ant_diagram