wow

1002: Flat-folding Curve-following Parabolic Corrugation

| wonko

I had been exploring corrugations that followed curved lines, as you do, and sort of worked out that you needed a quadrilateral face with equidistant gutters either side, but my rough approximations were foldable but not pretty:

Flat-folding Curve-following Parabolic Corrugation

Then I saw a published paper, about the same thing, that suggested square/rhombi arranged diagonally to follow the line, organised diagonal-based accordion pleats, and a scale factor bigger of the same shape for the gutter creases and bingo, problem solved.

Flat-foldability is a thing, there is lots of maths in it, but it is so satisfying to have manually derived something that was subsequently proven (*flex*).

Flat-folding Curve-following Parabolic Corrugation CP
Continue reading →

985: Satoshi Kamiya’s Ryu Jin 2.1

| wonko

Some folds are quite the journey, Ryu Jins are no exception. I have already folded the 1.2 and the 3.5, but had not tried the 2.1, relegating it to the “when I have time” pile:

2 point 1 - model

Holiday time is a time of recharge, paper folding therapy is my thing so I embarked on the super-duper-complex journey with HUGE bits of paper. I decided to fold it in 2 halves (two 140 x 70 cm rectangles of red duo Ikea Kraft paper).

2 point 1 - CP

As a bit of paper engineering, Ryu are masterpieces of fitting so much on a single square. The 2.1 is laid out in a similar morphology to the 3.5, with 2 halves of the model on opposite edges of the paper. The Ryu 1.2, in contrast, uses the diagonal and is symmetrical about that.

Continue reading →

982: Satoshi Kamiya’s “Tiger”

| wonko

I have been on a mission for months now to try and render a tiger as realistically as I can in paper. Apart from being feline in shape, tigers have stripes – finding a model that has these stripes was difficult:

Kamiya's Tiger

I bought Satoshi Kamiya’s latest book because of the tiger diagrams it contained – on flicking through the 200+ steps I initially thought it too difficult to try. But try I did, initially with large format red-natural Ikea Kraft paper. I was surprised that I was able to make it through the most torturous steps, so set about re-folding it with black/natural, ensuring the black was the stripes, natural was the residual body colour.

The genius of this design is the subtle and precise control of both sides of the sheet – the stripes are the result of folds, not cuts. The model requires you manipulate raw edges (the sheet border) fan-folded, while wrestling all the other details (legs, head, tail) from the INSIDE of the sheet – quite amazing.

Continue reading →

T-Rex Revisited

| wonko

I love a well-designed model and Fumiaki Kawahata’s T-Rex is no exception:

Trex

Folded from a 50cm square of medium green Tant paper, this lovely snapper has a splendid mobile jaw with teeth, fabulous feet and tail, and frustratingly useless front legs. The result is a fantastic free-standing model that looks simultaneously cute and terrifying.

The model structure is intense, this is the smallest I have tried it, and at this scale the pre-creasing is torturous (to be polite). The folds that raise the teeth from a series of accordion pleats are ingenious and tough work for fat clumsy fingers.

I have folded this before, and will probably return to it, as it is a great exercise in accuracy and patience – really good fold-therapy for a fragged and shagged brain.

trex view

972: “Simple” Square Rose

| wonko

I bought Naomiki Sato’s first book on origami roses to satisfy an obsession with mastering his pentagonal rose (a quest that is still in progress). Recently, he has published a second book (this one in English) and I knew I had to buy it:

complete

Perhaps starting my journey in the new book with a 15cm square of red washi was possibly not the most sensible thing to do (waay smaller than suggested), however I ploughed on and much to my delight fashioned a fairly decent rendering of the simple square rose – the first rose I have folded from a square that actually looks like a rose.

Continue reading →

967: Spike the Echidna

| wonko

Australia is the home of many unique animals – few come odder than monotremes, mammals that lay eggs – an echidna is one such critter.

spiny norman

I had seen folds of Steven Casey’s Echidna but struggled to find a source of diagrams – only by drilling down in Pinterest did I find some copyright infringer’s scanned pages of the diagrams (sorry, I would have purchased them could I find a publication that had them) and knew I had to have a go at it.

Central to the success of this model is the lovely crop of spines – these are treated scales (much like those that adorn Satoshi Kamiya’s Ryu Jin 2.1+), a lovely “preliminary base” tessellation that I had already mastered. the rest of the model is making the surrounding paper do the work of all the other stickey-outey bits of the animal.

spiny norman views

I particularly love the snout and head, so simple but so nice. It has 4 feet, each with toes – just genius.

You fold it, the resultant shape before you collapse it into it’s end 3D shape looks a lot like a pelt – not sure National Parks and Wildlife would appreciate the notion of an Echidna Pelt, but it then becomes round and plumptious and locks together ingeniously into an adorable spikey ball full of character.

Continue reading →

962: Ryu Jin 2.1 – Head

| wonko

In a bid to calm down and relax after a brutal week at work, I took a 60cm square of red/natural Ikea Kraft paper and started folding… and folded, and folded and folded.

Ryujui 1.2 head

I have been lured back into the fold (as it were) of Ryu Jin folders (nerds who attempt to fold Satoshi Kamiya’s devilishly difficult dragon series). Having already folded a 1.0, 1.2 and 3.5, I noticed that I had never attempted a 2.1.

Ryujui 1.2 head views and detail

For the uninitiated, the numbers indicate refinements, with the 1.0 being vaguely dragon like and the 3.5 (the culmination of this design process) being the most astonishingly detailed design imaginable.

Continue reading →

961: Drogon, The Black Dragon

| wonko

The lure of Satoshi Kamiya’s Dragon set is alluring. Recently I was invited into a community that celebrates the RyuJin series. Having folded a 1.0 and a 3.5, I thought it time to fold another:

Drogo, Satoshi Kamiya's RyuJin 1.2

This is the 1.2 – a refinement of the 1.0 and I had fun shaping the head as per a guide by Daniel Brown – a luscious and generously shared photodiagram set that I really enjoyed following.

My 1.2 is actually based on almost an identical crease pattern to the 1.0 I folded back in 2013, but back then I had NO IDEA how to shape it, and sort of made up shit as I went along.

Continue reading →

940: Kentrosaurus

| wonko

How often have you been totally lost in something – you know, time passes and you are so involved that you do not notice the passing of it? This model ate time and paper in quantity:

A fascinating exercise in vertex isolation, from a square to tease so many points while keeping enough paper for a body, legs and head – wow, just wow.

I found the diagrams as an un-attributed set of images on Pinterest (one of the many bastions of copyright infringement) but could not find details of either the designer or the publication – hints peeps? News just in: This is Fumiaki Kawahata’s Tuojiangosaurus published in the book “Origami Fantasy”

Continue reading →

934: Mikiller觅晨’s Modular Dragon

| wonko

Assignment time at school is fairly boring, for the most part, for a teacher. Students have lots to do, you need to be available to help on demand but there is a fair bit of sitting around waiting to be needed:

I had found a bunch of PDF’s explaining briefly how to fold parts of what I had assumed would eventually be a dragon. After trial folding the head and a foot I thought it was something I could do in stages. I (arbitrarily) decided my “standard square” would be the biggest cut from an A3 page. Most parts were then made using this standard.

Origami purists would probably have issues with this design, as there is an element of paper craft in some of the details, the head, for instance, is actually 1 standard square and 6 other bits of paper, folded and (shhh) glued in place. The body was made from 7 separate standard squares, 6 of which were the same, the tail segment was a little different to create the fan end.

Continue reading →

921 Leong Chen Chit’s 20 Intersecting Cubes

| wonko

When I first saw this modular, it broke my brain, but knew I wanted to fold it. I looked and looked for instructions and finally reached out to Leong Chen Chit, through connections to Sydney Origami Group on fakebook:

Units for this model are folded from an ‘almost’ half a4 sheet, through an ingenious geometric construction you get a fan fold that can then be mutated into the basic unit. Continue reading →

915: (365/365) Chris K Palmer’s “Flower Tower”

| wonko

I have a long and terrifying “fold me” list of models I will one day get around to – this was on it:

An excruciating fractal tessellation that eats paper like few other folds, based on spiral collapses of a dodecagon that then gets turned inside out to make the next level to collapse.

The unfold and re-collapse stages (I did 3, but theoretically could keep going getting smaller and smaller) looks like it is going to hell in a handbasket, then it sort of just sorts itself out in a magic sort of way. Continue reading →

845: (295/365) Leaf Katydid

| wonko

Insects seem to be a fascination among origami designers – at the height of “bug wars” when designers were competing for the most intricate designs that were  complex, had lots of legs, were thin and realistic renderings and really pushed the boundaries of existing techniques:

This astonishing model starts as a frog base. Through a torturous set of point isolation and narrowing, we get the impossibly thin legs and a lovely set of antennae. Halve this, now fold that in half, then do a double rabbit ear, now halve that … thank goodness for thiiiiin paper and accurate folding. Continue reading →

821: (271/365) Satoshi Kamiya’s Ant

| wonko

After re-subscribing to JOAS, in record time my back-issues of the Tanteidan magazine arrived and along with one of them, a really challenging diagram:

About 170 steps, extreme paper torture and, as a project, something truly terrifying but I knew I needed to try it. Continue reading →

795: (245/365) Tessellated Fractal

| wonko

Further exploring Shuzo Fujimoto’s “Hydrangea” fractal, it seems they can also be tessellated:

This is a 4x fold, but I have seen many many more, closer together also, interweaving and other mind-boggling combinations.

This fold has taken an age – started 4 days ago, finished yesterday (I had already decided on the spring shoot for yesterday’s fold) it is a lovely frame. Continue reading →

725: (175/365) 145 Point Sea Urchin

| wonko

So I ended up scoring an unexpected free afternoon so decided that serious paper torture would be fun:

Gridding then a breathtaking collapse took 4 hours to begin with. I knew I was up for a marathon fold to finish. Annoyingly I did not get this finished before fatigue took me – sometimes you get that. Continue reading →

710: (160/365) Star Luisium Test Fold

| wonko

The internet is an amazing thing, it affords connections between mortals and luminaries in the field:

I noticed Sara Adams (a living legend in the Origami World) was asking for test folders to test diagrams she was drawing and I immediately put my hand up. Continue reading →

625: (75/365) Mariposa

| wonko

I must admit to liking folding insects in Origami – something about the extreme paper wrangling necessary to separate out features from the sheet is a great challenge:

This is Eduardo Clemente’s “Mariposa” or Butterfly. An interesting fold indeed. Continue reading →

593: (43/360) Neal Elias’ “Andres Segovia”

| wonko

When a member of the British Origami Society, I purchased “Selected works of Neal Elias” and continue to find gems within it – this is one such treasure:

Modeled after a classical guitarist in 1970, this model starts with a 3×1 rectangle (8×23 to be exact) and, via miracles of box pleating (a pioneering technique back then) we tease an artist and his instrument. Continue reading →

3D Photography Using Fyuse

| wonko

A friend (waves at Roland!) excitedly showed me a new app called Fyuse that allows you to scan objects and create  interactive 3D photos of them.

For ages I have been increasingly unhappy with flat photos of really complex origami models and this tool seems to solve that problem, so long as the lighting is ok.

Unlike panorama software where you pan scenery and it stitches a long photo into a surround-scape, with Fyuse you focus on the object, moving the camera around it.

You can change the camera angle and do other things to enhance the photo but it is pretty neat – I will definitely experiment with it more.

If viewing this page on a mobile device, tilt and the images move with you in a sort of augmented reality sort of a way – otherwise drag with your mouse pointer to view these models for all sorts of angles.

I like that you can use a flash, move the model as you pan and that it allows you to see the nooks and crannies that would otherwise not be represented in a conventional flat photo