bi-colour

1121: Santa/Satan

| wonko

Comes the time of year when we tell little kids that a morbidly obese stranger in a red suit breaks into their house (by coming down a chimney or other entry point if there is no chimney), eats some random snack, feeds a portion of that snack to a reindeer (who has a birthmark on it’s nose) and then leaves presents, regardless of whether you have been an entitled little shit all year, or a saint:

As a parent I was complicit in this lie until my kids (fairly early on) cottoned on to the fact that this whole thing was so very unlikely, and merely a mechanism for justifying a mound of presents under the xmas tree.

I wanted to try out the new paper pack of Satogami I got from Origami-shop and this festive fold seemed like the perfect opportunity given the latest Tanteidan magazine (which contains it’s diagrams) arrived this week also.

Duo Satogami is quite thick. I bought a paper pack of 58cm squares, mixed colours and love the vibrancy of the red/white, and also love the texture of the paper. I _want_ to report that pre-creasing Satogami was easy … but … I really struggled to my the reference folds and to fold accurately because of the thickness and texture. The paper reverses fairly poorly also (meaning I had to correct lots of folds for accuracy as I went to ensure alignment of layers and edges during more complex moves.

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1120: Steven Casey’s “Numbat”

| wonko

Occasionally I am privileged to be asked to test-fold new models, and I jumped at the chance to fold this Numbat:

As far as I can see, this is the first depiction of this native Australian insectivorous marsupial in origami and the design captures the morpohology and proportions really well.

Starting with a preliminary base, then folding a skewed birdbase, the side stripes naturally emerge in cleverly controlled colour changes, along with the legs, neck and ant-eater-like snout, along with a lovely bushy tail.

I folded this chap from a 40cm square of white/natural Kraft paper (some of my last from the Ikea stash – I wish they sold it again, great stuff) and the fold sequence was fun – some really interesting moves and a good range of skills necessary to complete the model neatly.

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1119: Pocket Godzilla

| wonko

Leafing through one of the origami books I helped edit, I came across a cutey little “Godzila”esque model I had not folded:

Designed by Oriol Esteve, from his book “Fold with the Flow”, this charming little Chibimonster seems ready to terrorise Tokyo and dodge nukes as the ineffectual army fights back.

I used to watch monster movies with a passion, and the old “guy in a rubber suit” versions were terrifying as a kid, but the whole Godzilla franchise seems to go on and on with re-imaginings and various levels of tech in the VFX often getting in the way of the story, at least these days.

I had a 25cm square of blue metallic paper (I think from a sample pack from Origami-shop) that was light blue on the reverse, so decided to torture it into shape. The book suggests Kami, and thinner paper would have made some of the moves less thick, but I think I like him chunky. It is a fun design, starting with one of Oriol’s much-used bases. I like that both the eyes and the back spikes are colour changed. The proportions are nice and I also like that he free-stands because the centre of gravity has been considered in his pose.

1108: Poco Poco

| wonko

Browsing the current Tanteidan magazine, as you do (if you are a paid up member of JOAS), I saw a curious design for a “yummy” rounded unit, designed by Miyuki Kawamura, and decided to fold one:

The fold sequence is simple, the collapse creates a volumetric, rounded, colour-changed “eye-ball” like unit that holds itself together using paper tension. Like most unit designs, it has flaps and pockets, so I had to fold another 2 to see how they connect.

Again, by the miracle of paper tension 3 units unite into a lovely cube corner, so I had to fold another 3 units to make the smallest solid kusudama, again positively locked and, boy, the geometry is fascinating.

Nestled in among the eyeballs is a perfect cube. I may fold more of these (however I will fold using a smaller paper (I used 15cm square, but can easily fold smaller) as I think the 30 module is the pinnacle of weird but interesting kusudama.

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1091: 林靖詠’s “Man Folds Crane”

| wonko

I am interested in meta-folds – that is origami designs that are about origami, I stumbled across a series of 4 images of a man (torso) folding a crane on a routine image search for something else and decided I had to track it down. It was re-posted by a re-poster of the original and took some finding but this little beauty finally gave up some prototype Crease Patterns (CPs 1, 2, 3 and 4) and final images and I knew I had to try them:

I took my 90cm medium-thickness roll of Kraft and carved off a square, divided it into fifths, then halved until I got to 40ths, then split the big square into 4 equal smaller squares – each now a 20×20 grid.

Each figure has a different crease pattern – not sure why. I am fairly certain they were all variations generated by Boxpleat Studio (a program that takes stick figures and works out CPs), but I decided to persist – some worked perfectly, some were more of a challenge than others to collapse, each more or less made the formation of the man and the part of the crane easy, but had to nut out some things that were trickey.

I like this design, and am still working on the best way to display it – I am thinking eventually a shadowbox frame might be best.

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