At Long Last

After a couple of months, I'm finally able to fold again. Projects and homework assignments have overlapped with my time playing basketball and volleyball, meaning that I haven't had much in the way of free time. Christmas break began yesterday, so now I have plenty of time - but that doesn't mean that the work has stopped. I have 2 or 3 projects (including sub-projects put together as one) that I have to finish over the break, some that are going to take some time.
However, I've been using my time for the past two days as most people would on break. Yesterday morning, I started doodling with Andrew's latest creation in mind. I ended up with something bird-like, and played around with it until I had a little penguin. Here is the CP:


The middle point can be open-sinked (open-sunk?) to make feet and the bottom right hand corner makes the color changed belly. The eyes and beak in the top left corner are also color changed, and the wings can be folded however you like. Here id my model. Good luck! I hope to fold something(s) for the holidays.

Fun With Corrugations

I've always liked the look of Ray Schamp's corrugations, but I'd never really thought of making something similar. I was thinking of using more acute angles with the basic waterbomb corrugation (such as on Sipho Mabona's Fugu). Eventually, I tried the same thing with obtuse angles, which lead me to the idea of going from small to big. I didn't that I would be able to fold it flat, but it ended up that it does! The mountain / valley theme of the model lead me to the name Erosion. Here is the CP:


There isn't much to do in the way of details. The CP folds the whole model. Because of the change in angles, the model makes a sort of oval shape when flat. Here are some pictures.

Meeting the Deadline

I have to say, I'm quite happy right now. Eric Madrigal started posting an origami countdown two days ago, making me realize how little time I had left to fold another spectacled bear for the challenge. For the past month, I had been thinking of a better way to fold the eyes, because on my first bear I had them "backwards". My idea was a fold a small 45° color changed triangle for the eyes which I could pinch and round, making it look somewhat like Bernie Peyton's model (from his picture, you can tell that he did something completely different). I tried a few times to make this triangle, but usually ended up with annoying other color changes and upside down triangles. Finally this morning I managed to get it right. It took me 4 tries to get a body that I liked, but the body isn't that important. Here is my CP. The 90° lines in the bottom corner are ninths.


As you can see, all that this CP folds is the color changed triangle. The body can be folded any way you like. I folded the tail end underneath and made the separate legs with diagonals and flattening. For the ears, I used a simple pleat idea which is also used many times for my Samurai Helmet Beetle. The outside part of the ears can only be folded once the model is 3D. After making the model 3D, you can unfold the tail end underneath to make the body closed. Good luck!

Succumbing to Peer Pressure

If you have a flickr account and have many other artists as contacts, you might already know that I've folded a loon from the title. A loon? Of course! There always seem to be a subject that pops up that everyone tries to design. For instance, I folded my poppy design last November, which to lots of designing/redesigning by others. This started with Joseph Wu designing a loon for a request from Eric Gjerde. Soon, I saw three other new loon designs in the contacts display on the flickr homepage. Of course, I had to try it myself. The neat thing is with the spots on the body of the loon, you can interpret it as a lot of things. I tried to capture the light and dark parts with the black and white colors. I don't have a CP, because the model is from a fish base. Many of the folds don't even have references, but I might try diagramming this because of its simplicity. Here is the model that I ended up with:

Taking a Break

From school work and sports, that is. I really haven't had that much free time lately, but I was lucky enough to have the cold this weekend, so I finally got around to folding again. At first, I had no idea what to fold, and then I remembered the Models from Triangles challenge. I had thought of folding a tessellation from an equilateral triangle earlier, so thats what I started to do. After folding the grid, I remembered Geoff Mayhew's Tortoise, which had made me want to fold an animal form the same grid. After folding for a while, I ended up with my own simple tortoise, using a small hexagon as the shell. My first model had lots of thinning on the legs, but I decided later that it looked better just to leave the legs pretty much how they come out. Here is the CP.


I'm glad I found Inkscape's axonometric grid function a while ago, otherwise it would have taken me a lot longer to draw the CP. The CP ends up with the four legs, large head and a small tail. You can sink and unsink the tail, and fold the legs down and use a couple of pleats on the shell so that it has a more 3D shape. A couple of pleats on the head will do the same thing. I think that I might try diagramming this model.