Tintin Rocket Workshop

For my sins I have agreed to do a workshop today between 4 and 6pm at the Woodmill Depot in Bermondsey.

I said to the organisers that I would go through a series of models that I had designed myself teaching people how to make them and explaining the processes that are behind the designs.  This is much scarier than it sounds.  I have developed a series of step by step models (each step as a separate piece of paper).  I have the butterfly, tintin rocket, scorpion, and squid ready with a more complicated plan for presenting the hellraiser flower.  This is all to say that I have been thinking about this all too much.  I am thinking I will present a basic extrapolation petal folds as a very versatile element in design in my own development.

I have included the tintin rocket photos here.  I realised I have never documented it.  It is I think the first model of my own design.  It is at least 15 years old and I find it very strange to even conceive of what my thought processes were when I made it first.

What I think scares me is how simple it seems and that no one will see anything exciting in it.  I am sure that if I tried to present all my work in 2 hrs I would confuse and annoy but it is strange all these models are at least 5 years old and there are so many good models in the world.  My current pieces are so abstract that naming them would almost be lying.  Too much time making origami I think.  And of course I got distracted and have discoverd a new fold and started making claws or eagles or goat heads from it.  Grrr always everything at once.

Anyway I hope you enjoy the rocket it is still nostalgic to me.

Firstfold Mushroom

So I gave in and looked up mushroom designs online.  It was gooooood.  I found this set of images by firstfold and was genuinely hitting my head with the keyboard.  

I had come across stuff like it when making the chess set.  It is basically a piece of paper consertinad 16 times then you make a profile of half of the shape you want and then you expand the outer edge of the shape around and back onto itself.  Honestly that actually makes sense to me.

Anyway I loved the fact that I made a turtle while trying to make a mushroom and firstfold made a mushroom while trying to make an umbrella.

I simply added a ruffle to make it a little more atomic and presto.  Annoyingly I thought the stem should be taller so I had to make a second one.

I know an origami mushroom cloud is loaded.  I think I first started formulating this idea with Thomas Hirschorn's mushrooms in Drift Topography that I had the job of stopping from self destructing while it was on at the Tate.  I remember all the morning after style films and TV series when I was a kid and liked how playful his approach to the subject was.  I think that shape is a modern titan.

You can see from the photos there were 2 and they are both from 10cm square memo cube paper.  A bit silly really but somehow it seemed right if I could do it all at such an actual mushroom scale.   

Mushroom

So I did photograph the mushroom this morning.  It is a little bit of a long shot, more of an architectural shape that I have given a name to.

The basic idea was that the same folds that I use for stairs, the cowboy hat and the ziggurat can be turned inside out to create a sort of darting in the paper.  When repeated this gives a bump in the middle of the sheet.  I used a simple tuck underneath to stop it undoing itself.  

For the mushroom head I just did a second set of darts a bit further from the middle and on the diagonal.  I have to admit the rolled paper as the base is kind of funny.  I like the idea of a non folded origami object.  This again is a multi piece model which am in two minds about but it hasn't stopped me posting it.

Slow Turtle

Sorry Nick, thank you for looking.  I just get sidetracked and forget that people might actually look at what I post.

 Anyway I was trawling the origami photography archive I put together a while ago.  I was reminded of one of my favourite older designs.  Again the paper is grid based, I think I like the malleability of grid systems in origami it can quickly lead to some really strange shapes.  I remember enjoying the bubble shape I made in the middle of the paper which i thought might make a good mushroom head but the excess  turned out more like legs and presto, a turtle. A kind of slow and dopey looking one at that.

I have made another dome thing in the middle of a piece of paper which looks a bit like a mushroom and I will hopefully have worked into a photographable object soon.