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1104: BE the Water

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For the last few years, over what was the Christmas holiday school holidays, I have gone lap swimming at a 50m pool near(ish) me. I always intended to continue into the year, but work and lane availability (due to squad training) at the times I could go always got in my way:

Having recently retired, I have been able to continue right into winter (the pool is indoor, it is heated) at a time that suits me, and choose to do it as one of my activities on Wednesdays. It is part of a broader activity set that is hopefully keeping me fitter and a little less fatter.

I first saw this lovely, simple, perfect design on Joseph Wu’s Facebook feed. It is a rare privilege to have one of Joseph’s designs shared step by step, and knew it was something I HAD to fold. It perfectly captures that delicate balance between clawing through the water, and drowning. The model is taking a breath on the left-hand side. This is something I struggle to do due to neck vertebrae fusion (for some reason right-hand breathing is easier). Swimming is a gentle exercise that is gradually giving me back some of the movement lost since the neck re-build.

I folded the model from a piece of Tuttle indigo dye duo paper that has a pattern that closely resembles the ever-changing abstract water caustics I swim through every time I get in the pool. I love the simplicity but also the accurate depiction of that, a very human act of swimming.

1103: Brian Chan’s “Walking Locust”

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This model has been on my “must fold” for ages, but I had only ever seen a CP and could never make head nor tail of the design. I saw a rendition on Origami Dan Discord and, after an enquiry it turns out there exists an unofficial diagram, drawn by Hua Ge that guides folders through this terrific insect:

I split a sheet from a new 60cm roll of medium weight Kraft and began folding. There is a load of pre-creasing, primarily setting up the high-density collapses to make the long thin legs, so accuracy early on pays dividends later.

Uncharacteristically, this model uses loos pleat structures to bulk out the body, define the wing covers and head/thorax/abdomen, with a deliciously complex un-sink to make the head-thorax join. Interestingly this model also has a super-detailed head/face – it reminds me so much of the hoppers in “A bugs life”, and it has real “cute” personality, as much as a locust can be cute.

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1100: Steven Casey’s “Clownfish”

| wonko

I have the privilege of being asked, from time to time, to test fold origamists new models. Steven Casey (designer of the BEST origami echidna there is) asked me to test his new design for a clownfish, naturally I jumped at the chance:

I took a 6″ square of regular origami paper (orange on one side, white on the other) and, armed with disbelief that this was the suggested paper size, began folding.

My fold approach over the years has changed markedly – I fold until either (1) I get to the end or (2) it fails, and I learn something. I FULLY expected this to go wrong – my fat clumsy fingers do not normally fold those small squares of origami paper people keep giving me (with every good intention), and for LOTS of this model I resorted to my favourite set of bent-nose tweezers just to keep it sharp (and not mush with said fat clumsy fingers).

It became pretty apparent early on that the fold sequence was entirely achievable with 6″ (15cm) squares, resulting in a charming little totally recognizable nemo. I made a few cosmetic suggestions to the diagram set (sometimes the designer lets me edit their diagram directly) and repeated the fold on 17cm square – I liked the smaller one better but it was prolly because I rushed the second fold while paying attention to the telly instead. I would like the head/gills to lock on to the body a little more and the fins also to stay together, but these are minor unimportant quibbles.

I am hoping Steven is planning a book of his new designs, this one is lovely and reminds us all that “you just gotta keep swimming”.

1099: Songbird

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To mark the release of Phạm Hoàng Tuấn’s new book, he released a photo sequence of a little songbird on Fakebook:

Hundreds of development photos lead you (sort of) through the exacting process of folding this little wren-like bird. I decided to throw some nice paper at it.

The suggested size the author used was 20cm, so I went 35cm square, thinking I would have been safe, but should have looked ahead as it got waaaay too thick due to layers really quickly. Not to be deterred, I thought I would try to shepherd the now clearly wrong paper through a torturous fold,

In the end, some features (like the head) were really clumsily folded due to thickness, but I am pretty happy with the number of bird-like features I was able to tease out of this lovely sheet. I was also reminded of an important lesson – choice of appropriate paper is REALLY important on complex-supercomplex models.

I posed and stabilised it as much as possible, and will prolly fold it again some other time. The photo sequence was super annoying to use – it kept timing out (google drives get lazy) and so many of the photos showed indeterminate actions at times I was left scratching my head thinking “what is actually being shown here”. Beggars cannot be choosers however, so I gave it a red hot crack.

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1098: Dumb and Dumber

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I love a clever conceptual fold, and “Emptyhead” designed by Boice Wong (origamibyboice) is a clever example of art designed to make you think:

The first of these models – “Emptyhead I” is a lovely character that has an empty box sitting on his shoulders for a head. This model, uses a variation of the original CP (crease pattern), and represents his dumber brother completely detaching his head from his shoulders.

The original, as folded by Boice, has a solid cube for a head, but I Macgyvered a scheme to make it an open 2x2x2 cube instead, so he is clearly related to his more sensible brother.

From a 32 grid, this model cleverly presents shoes, cuffed pants, dress shirt, tie, collar, overcoat with lapels, 1 regular arm and one extra long arm, part of which becomes the box head. Such a neat design, the paper cleans itself up and provides wraps to make the seams tidy on the arms also. All this with no cuts, folds only. I did resort to using a few white glue spots to keep seams and layers in place, but tried to keep it as au-naturel as it was possible while being able to pose him for archival purposes.

I must admit to obsessing about this version, having solved the CP for the first version fairly quickly (which really surprised me if I am honest). I just assumed this version would let me make the free box head, but as I discovered, turning the long pleated tube into an open-ended box, when there was so little paper was a major issue.

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