Centipede

Here is a centipede I have been working on.  The head is constantly undergoing redesign so I haven't concentrated on it.   The segments are quite easy, just petal folds and a 9 square grid.  then I link them together.

The truth is that my centipede only has 56 legs at the moment but apparently very few centipedes have 100 legs and no millipedes have 1,000,000 legs.  

mounted animal heads

I have to say I feel a bit bad about this post.  

So I have had this thing with making origami heads.  The  bat, the manbat and the bat mask are a result of this.  

So while looking at Robert Langs Nautilus and just playing with a part along the way I came to the dog head here.  I liked it and am playing with body ideas and am getting somewhere but not fast. 

It made me think of having done this before.  I remember working on a body for an axolotl  based on the head pictured here.  The body was passable at best.  

So I thought what could I do with these heads.  I could do masks but it seemes incomplete to me so I came up with the head rack.  It is slightly adjusted for each of the heads here but it is just a shield with a bunch of overlaps in the middle that the neck of your head can fit into.

So here they are.  

The axolotl, the dog, the bat and Rachels cobra which I like very much.  Rachel showed it to me at the pub and I stole it to copy and mount on an origami wall.

Scissors 3... something about revenge of the ...

Here is my how to as jpegs.

Is this makable by anyone else?

Scissors 2

I decided to post a how to for the scissors and as usual it all went wrong.  

First I found the wiki how to origami scissors page which made me think it would be cool to post my design.  

Then I sat down to make instructions and realized again how hard that is.  

Then I looked further and found the scissors posted here which are better than mine.  

So now I have a pdf and 4 pictures on how to make an inferior pair of scissors.    I do like that mine are way too complicated but that is all I have left.

And I cant publish a pdf on this blog!

Skips

Last night I had a little accident.  I knocked over a skip.  Admittedly it was a small skip full of paper and it got me thinking.  So I made an origami skip to match and then changed the skip to be more like the skip I knocked over so I guess I made 2 origami skips.

Like everything the skip has a story....

A while ago while I was installing Martin Kippenbergers Heavy Burschi I had this idea for an exhibition where I hired a skip and  put it in the middle of a gallery.  Artists are invited to deposit a work they made that they would like destroyed.  The show would run for a set period of time and at the end of the show the skip would be taken away and the works destroyed.  I still like this idea and have some ideas for where I would like to have the show even.  

So the other day a friend, Ellie, handed me  the small plastic skip / paper and pen holder while we were charity shopping.   I think the general response to it is that it is U.G.L.Y. but I love it.  So it is my memocube holder at home now. Thus the skip accident image.

It is strange how origami and art interrelate at least in my mind.

Hellraiser flower cube

So the interlocking method on the flowers continues through till you make 2 sets of 3 and then you combine them all.  I have to say here that a chill went up my spine when I finished it for the first time because I was suddenly reminder of Clive Barkers Hellraiser films.  All of them were centred around a puzzle box that was extremely complex but if solved opened a gatway to hell.  A bit over the top I know but I do remember thinking it at the time.  And now it is a good excuse for cheap special effects.

Interlocking flowers

So.. thinking about the modular origami thing again.  I came up with what I describe as a flower a few years back.  It isn't really a flower of any kind that I can think of but it is abstract and has symetry.   I then discovered modular origami and began to reassess the possibility of old abstract designs.  while doing so I came across the interlinking method which I have photographed here.  

 

Bouncy Ziggurat

Following the discovery of the folds that make the cowboy hats dome section I realised you could repeat the same principle to make more complex structures.  The ziggurat is actually made up of a diagonal grid with the corners tucking into each other under the base.  After making this I saw an Eiffel Tower diagram which is really nice and uses the same basic idea.

Cowboy Hat

So about 12 years ago I made the mistake of telling a friend, Liam that I could make just about anything in origami.  In my defence I had just finished making all the models in a book I had but there is no excuse for such things.  So he quite fairly asked for a cowboy hat.  I was floored.  About 6 years later I finally got it.  There is an image of it in the shop window on top of the black knight earlier this month.  

I was told that the Japanese folders just publish their crease diagrams and that this was quite annoying because it was almost impossible to figure out the folds from it.  I am thinking about doing a how to series on this design but have yet to do so but I have done a crease diagram and it is quite pretty, sorry. 

Chess Pieces

Here are the individual pieces.  I had trouble with ataching all the images to one post.

Chess Set

So I have this image of an origami chess set made from one piece of paper.  This is a bit of a lie but it is also strangely true.  

I guess I should start with credits.  I came up with the consetina design after looking at a set of drawings from students at the Dessau school.  The Dessau art school was a major part of the Bauhaus movement in Germany pre WW2.  I was actually involved in hanging the Albers and Maholi-Nagi show at the Tate and started to see a strong origami element in the work.  Especially the work of Konrad Puschell.  

Anyway, while looking through some books I flipped past a page that looked a bit like my first picture ( I am still looking for the picture I am talking about, but no luck yet).  I am not sure if the drawing was of an origami model or not but I made it out of a single sheet of uncut paper later that day.

Then a few weeks later on a work trip in Germany I was stuck in a hotel bored and folding and I came up with the idea of making a chess set by changing around the consetina object to make each of the pieces.  This was made easier by the use of a digital camera to capture an image of each piece without me having to remake each piece.

Out of lazyness I then just photoshopped the pieces together using the negative images of the pieces to represent the opposing colour. Thus the chess set out of one piece of paper (and many photographs of it collaged together).

 I have actually changed the designs a bit since then but I have included a photoshopped image very similar to my original idea here.  I actually prefer the collaged set to the real thing which took me a year os so to get around to making. 

Photographs

Here are a few photos of the front window as it was at 12.30 yesterday.  Yes colour photographs.  I promise it wont happen again.  The object under the stairs was an Odradek not that anyone could recognise it and the 2 part black and white thing is a knight from my chess set design with a stetson hat on.

The window display has been taken down now. 

Showy

Well  the opening happened last night and it was fun.  Thank you Rachael, Louise and Rosemary for having me. Thank you for the tunes Jaime, and thanks to those who came along, and thank you to Dave and Ellie for the help too.  So much thanks.

So... here's what I learned yesterday.  I know very little and I need to read,  listen and think more.

These are great things to learn.  I failed in my initial promise to make the whole thing an accessible paper folding foray and got nervous and show-offy and put a bunch of pieces that I am actually quite happy with on display. I plan more butterflies I promise.  

I sidelined my butterfly to show off and in a way I had to do it.  I was nervous and excited and self conscious.  While at the opening Larry showed me an origami butterfly (need more info to put link in here) which frankly did more with less and became a bear... so cool.  It also taught me that you can make a flapping version of my butterfly by folding back its wings and pressing on its spine.  

My shambling bat upside down looks like scooby doo and I am looking into ways to make the butterfly more a part of the shop and show.

Yes Simon I will put in photographs of the show soon.