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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