Waterfall 2

As I said in my last post I have remade the waterfall but less regularly.

I know that is not a great description but the photos should fill in the gaps.

Strangely the waterfall from the last post now reminds me more of a shambling Lovecraftian monster that moves through the weird angles in space and time. I think that may just be me.

The Wallet 3

These two designs are a bit insane. They developed from the corner listed in the last post.

Images 1 & 2 : the ziggurat fish. This half made bouncy ziggurat has the impression of a more organic object thus the 'fish'. This is odd as it is a working model for a more complex ziggurat with a ramp or steps up one side.

Images 3 & 4 : waterfall. When I made the steps using the same corner fold I enjoyed its solid architectural feel. If you fill a page edge to edge with corned folds the pleating and splaying are conversely very organic. I may make a less regular version of this.

That about wraps it up. That wallet is now refilled with crisp unfolded paper and I will try to post more about what I am doing along the way. I have three other wallets but that is getting ridiculous.

The Wallet 2

Image 1 : corner. This is an origami corner I use in things like my ziggurat, cowboy hat and the Eiffel Tower I made in Paris but found out had almost fold for fold been designed by someone else earlier.

Image 2 : umbrella investigation. I was looking at the construction and folding of an umbrella and am working towards a similar plan for a sheet of paper and this is one of the accidents I came across on the way.

Image 3 : intertwined snakes. That is a reaching description of this development from my new base fold which I have yet to figure out how to make into something less abstract.

Image 4 : centipede segment. I think I will do a class on how to fold this piece. It is a segment of the centipede I came up with a while ago. If I got 50 people to make one each and we link them together (that is part of the design). We could make the hundred legs I have been very slowly working towards on my own.

The Wallet 1

I was thinking that I just haven't posted in a while and that might imply that I do not do origami very often. This sadly is not the case. I am posting here the contents of my origami wallet. A small plastic envelope ( kindly gifted to me by Rachel ) that contains about 100 pieces of memocube paper. I often fold something and then unfold it and flat-pack it back into this wallet. I went to find a fresh piece of paper the other day and realised there were none. So last night I emptied out the wallet, refolded the origami pieces in it and have photographed a few of them here. Due to the limited number of images I can include per post this may take a few.

Image 1 : parabola. I have worked out that not only can you make an approximate parabola by folding one edge of a sheet of paper to a central point but that this can be be used as a basis for approximating the intersection of two curved planes. That is as close as I will ever get to explaining that.

Image 2 : double inverted corner. This is similar to my ashtray design but with a second inversion of the 3 corner faces.

Image 3 : axolotl head. This is an old favorite. I made it and tried to make a body but have failed to do that well so made a series of animal heads on mounts. I just made this again to remind myself of how it is done.

Image 4 : Squid in construction. This is a partially finished squid. I cannot remember why i started this or why it isn't finished but my tube probably came into the station. I made a squid the other night for a friend, Gen. It is fun to show off.

1(a... (a leaf falls on loneliness)

1(a

le
af
fa
ll

s)
one
l

iness

by E. E. Cummings

This is a piece that I recently made and use as a bookmark. This is is good for the origami as it compresses the piece much more neatly into a flat leaf and because it is functional which makes me happy.
I like the fact that the edges of the paper are the edge of the leaf, this is surprisingly rare in models I have seen.
I also like the fact that the back still has the overall shape of a leaf but the silly amount of folding becomes like the complexity of veins in a leaf. If you hadn't noticed I am quite chuffed with this design.
The poem is one that my partner introduced to me before we started going out, it is nice to have a model to go with it.

Virtual Origami

Sorry about the blogging splurge. Lots of old ideas to share but new stuff is happening.

I have been obsessing about virtual interpretations of origami for some time now. I have recently undertaken the mind bending project of making a 3d model of the hellraiser flower I wrote up in 2008. The inspiration is the idea that if models can be made of these objects then maybe someone can explain to me how to apply the geometry of movement to a 3d model so it can be animated. This would make the animations I have made much simpler to generate. I personally think the future of origami on the web is 3d models that you can get to fold in an animated way to get past the incomprehensibility of most advanced origami instructions.

So here is the hellraiser flower reinterpreted as a 3d object and posed to look like the images I posted of the real origami object. And I have also posted the sketchup model here which I can rotate in my browser but I am not sure how accessible this is.

Story Arc 4: Aerodynamic Bird

This is really a story about the pace of origami design and thought.

Last year I held a demonstration where I showed a group of varying ages and abilities some of my designs through a step by step instructional course. As with all these things participating in the performance denies any objective understanding of how it went. Suffice to say I was left with a sense of inept fumbling on my part.

There were to moments which really stuck in my mind.
Firstly; the boy who got bored and made up a great flea design of his own while waiting for me to teach him how to do a scorpion was truly humbling.
Secondly; one of the other boys quite reasonably asked if the bird I was folding could fly. Now the more mature audience quickly poo pooed the idea that it should and we carried on as if the question had never happened. The kid was right. Why not. We make paper planes that look nothing like planes but they fly. That is their job! Oh, from the mouths of babes grrrr.

So six or so months later while playing with the new base I have been working on I made this bird. I Have to admit that the look is a bit chunky but when I made it from a 21x21 cm (squared up a4) sheet it was aerodynamically sound!!!

My sister and I tested it of the roof of my studio building. It flew! A bit wonky like any paper plane but it flew.

Story Arc 3:New fold

So this wave on the edge is a bit boring and I quickly moved to experimenting with it, I had tried to do it on 2 and 4 corners of a piece of paper thus the bulls head and bowl designs in the earlier post.

I then moved on to making the wave pattern work symmetrically towards the center. This is hard to fully explain so the crease pattern here and the subsequent images are hopefully clearer. The practical upshot is a new base fold pattern for me to work from.

Story Arc 2: Fascinators

The small wave at the edge of the paper in my last post was somewhat of a revelation to me. The concept of using the majority of the square of paper as a formal element to which a small articulate origami fascinator is folded in really appeals. I am not sure where this will go but here are a few examples so far.

Story arc

So I have been thinking allot lately.  Working too hard and sadly as a result making allot of progress.  Sadly because it is an apparent fact that I come up with better ideas when I am under duress.  I think it is why I like origami.  It is a completely uninterested practice.  Very few people I know even know other people who make it and when I am concentrating on other things I seem to relax when I consciously think about origami.

So I had an idea recently.  I thought to make a wave on the edge of a triangle of paper.  It is pretty sad as an idea and I don't even think I like the result but it was the start of a few good lines of enquiry that I like the results of.  I think the wave as an idea is the result of making Robert Lang's Nautilus ages ago but it really just came to me.

I worked on it and the fold pattern turned out to be quite versatile.

The story arc in the title refers to the fact I came up with this over a month ago and I have generated two new full designs and one whole new school of origami for me from this starting point.  I hope to write these up in imminent blogs and through the time travelling power of links interconnect the four blogs I plan to write ( including this one ) into clear lines of development.

So these images are of the wave fold pattern and the wave as well as the bulls head (also bad) and the bowl (still not good). 

I have also tried to add a couple of gadgets to the blog.  I do not know if this is a good idea or not but I am trying to be as modern as I can be.