fish

309: V for Vendetta

| wonko

Remember remember the fifth of November
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason why gunpowder, treason
Should ever be forgot…

As a kid I remember cracker night – well in truth, it was cracker week because you could buy fireworks and we used to spend the week blowing things up. In retrospect, all that messing around with gunpowder was really dangerous, but apart from some occasional superficial burns and the odd scorched letterbox we came to no real harm.

I am generally not a fan of Natalie Portman – the Star Wars prequels put me off a lot but she has been outstanding in a couple of subsequent movies – “Black Swan” and “V for Vendetta” for example. This is “V”, the psychopath in the Guy Fawkes mask and I am pretty happy with the result.

Designed by Brian Chan, it is an exercise in restraint, as you have a black/white paper and fold all the black inside, then, later, carefully reveal tiny hints of it – very clever design actually. you get eyes, a rather splendid nose, pencil moustache and goatee in a lovely mask shape, nice.

You can have a go for yourself – it is fairly easy and totally appropriate for Guy fawkes day

299: Platypus

| wonko

It is a little known fact that Australians MADE UP the Platypus to see who would be silly enought to believe in it:

Let’s face it – an aquatic, furry mammal that feeds it’s young milk in a pouch, after they hatch from eggs; duck-bill, webbed feet, beaver tail, “see” via electrical sonar through their nose; male with poisonous spines – LOL. No one would be sill enough to believe in that illogical Frankenstein-like collection of bits of other critters, surely.

I have only ever had second, or third-hand experience of a Platypus – NEVER seen one live so I have to rely on others’ account of them.

A relatively simple figurative fold – they cannot all be huge, quite happy with this – I can see large modelability in this figure. Could not work out who designed it, sorry – anyone advise?

184: An Alpaca

| wonko

I thought I would try something simpler, so found what looked like a mostly harmless little Llama model designed by Jim Adams:

On paper, this model was straight forward – in practice however the thickness of layers at the tail end made this model impossible to fold using copy paper (I tried, breaking one of my own rules, it exploded – well, split and the tail broke off, so I started again) so I used a square of tissue foil – even then the tail was too thick to be elegant, pity – the diagram makes it look crisp and slender. I guess if one used large format foil it might be easier – not sure the overall model proportions warrant that treatment however.

Some interesting applications of sink, crimp and double-rabbit ears – it suggested double rabbit-earing the rear legs – already needle thin, I merely reverse folded them and think that is a better result. Pity they are so thick else I would have added hooves also.

Although it is diagrammed as a Llama, I think it is more like an Alpaca (mostly because I wanted to use “an” in the title and “An Llama” does not seem right – yeah, I know, tissue thin reasoning there but you get that)

98: See Saw

| wonko

This is a cute action model, counter-balanced so it actually rocks back and forth:

It is supposed to be 2 children, opposite ends of a see-saw – a boy (wearing an Indian costume and feather) and a girl (in a bonnet) – use your imagination or some recreational chemicals and it is as clear as anything.

Designed by Fred Rohm, I folded this from “Secrets of Origami” by Robert Harbin, one of my oldest books – a simple model as I was brain-fried after a punishing term, hope you like it.