wtf

458: Lang’s Flying Grasshopper = Jemima Cricket = WTF# 20

| wonko

Sometimes I just need to fold, it is difficult to explain but I find great clarity in wrestling with complex geometry. We ALL have much to learn GRASSHOPPER. 

Having bought Robert Lang’s “Origami Insects Volume 2” I thought it was high time to fold something from it.

Lang’s models are great technical exercises, amazing manipulations of the plane to the extraordiary.

I am also searching for a model to use a sheet of Origamido paper I have on, but will not use it as a first fold – it costs too much.

There is lots to like with this model, and it was a good WTF exercises – sadly my origami friends probably recognised it immediately and my other friends had no clue.

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457: Happy Book (WTF#18)

| wonko

Fernando Gilgado is a legendary character folder, I have made many of his models, this one is a charmer:

from one sheet of paper, you get 6 pages, a hard cover, arms, legs, a smile and eyes peeping over the top – neat

So, as I mark furiously (having run out of the ability to put it off any longer), my procrastigami takes hold and I started bending something. I also wanted to try out my new self-healing craft mat (the green griddy thing) and have discovered that folding from an iPad or other tablet is better than a book because of the pinch-zooming possible to help old eyes see details of diagrams. Continue reading →

456: L’essence d’un escargot

| wonko

I was exploring a corrugation technique I last used with Eric Joisel’s Bandoneon and stumbled across a sort of plan to fold Joisel’s Snail:

You start with an extraordinarily long (my estimate – 3.25m) and narrow (in my model 9cm) strip of paper, then start folding slanted lines (using a 3:1 gradient) in both directions

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455: The White Keep

| wonko

In days of old, when people of a township were threatened they retreated (as their last best hope) into the Keep – a heavily fortified “core” of the castle that was designed to withstand the most vigorous of attacks

So I had this odd but interesting idea that it should, given the right size of paper, be possible to fold an entire castle from it. After being inspired by Gachepaper and his exploration of Lotka I decided to give it a whirl

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449: Chaka Ryu

| wonko

I stumbled across low res hand-drawn diagrams of a Ryu (Chinese dragon) and with a cursory glance said “why not give that a go”:

Two weeks later and a whole bunch of improvising helped me realise that may not have been a wise choice but I have something that is at least based on Hoang Trung Thanh’s model but not faithful to it.

On folding the range of pleats I added a ziggy zaggy spine, decided on 3 rows of scales and invented a method of locking the leg units (each leg is a separate sheet of paper) into the body pleats. I also stuffed the body (with neutral facial tissues) for a little shape and added a nice row of belly scales which I think make it look pretty nice.

The head instructions were un-followable (to me at least) so I sort of wrangled a new head with some lovely horns and a nice open mouth. Continue reading →