As a teacher, I look for activities, particularly in the establishment phase of a year, to engage. Nothing says engagement like a hands-on physical activity and, as my wont is origami, I went for a modular project:
The themes for this were many, the metaphors a plenty – “many hands make light work” and “the sum is greater that it’s parts” being central.
It took me ages to even understand what this model was:
An ingenious design by David Brill, modular in construction composed of 3 different types of modules, clustered in threes, hinged together, it is a most perplexing construction.
A seemingly plain cube opens up to show a star, which fits wholly within the cube and is removable.
Flexing the cube makes another star, flexing the star makes a plank, stellated plain and other interesting twisted geometries.
This is a keeper – paper tension keeps it in shape generally but it does not strongly lock, so I may resort to cello-tape on the joints so it can be handled without risk of it disintegrating (as it did to me twice).
The geometry is interesting, photographing it seems not to do justice to the shapes but I am glad I finally nutted it out – bravo Mr Brill.
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
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
So, it emerges that Dweezil has a little brother. Ladies and Gentleffolk, if I may introduce Master Balthazaar Quercus, aged 6¾:
I was asked to liberate this cute little chap from the flat sheet of lithography paper he was trapped in as a parting gift for a colleague. Aware this may create precedent, this is my first COMMISSIONED dwarf (my charities will be well pleased with the extra injection of funds).
I took what I had learned from wrangling Dweez’ and refined the model – this is free standing, on a base (a bit of wood covered also in litho paper offcuts – like the one I used for Mortimer). I liked the sitting on a stack of books idea, so pierced a stack of three with some structural wire that goes into a hole in the base and goes up Balthy’s bottom, carries on up his back and across his shoulders to support him.
The result is charming – I think I nailed the facial expression (although how a 6¾ year old dward has such a full beard is something only another dwarf could answer) and am getting quite good at the whole pointed, curley shoes thing.
There seems a demand for dwarves, they are all different indeed and this one was folded entirely by memory (quite proud of that, given how unreliable my memory is). If YOU want one, have your people call my people, we can agree on the finances (charity days are numbered, once ALL the 365 origami debt is cleared then I guess the funds should be redirected to the paper wrangler).
