I imagine that it must be colder in Antartica...

It may be cold in Canada right now, but its probably a bit colder down in the coldest place in the world (even if it is summer there...). I started off trying to fold a pterodactyl, but it didn't turn out too well because I made the body a bit too big. Later on, I may try it again. But anyway, I started making the wings smaller with various valley folds and then had something that looked like the stubby wings of a penguin. This gave me the idea, and I continued by making the small feet and moving the head around a bit. But even before all that, I got this CP:


The model did turn out a lot like an emperor penguin, even if it was supposed to be a prehistoric flying animal, and the only thing that I don't really like about it is the CP. It does take quite a bit of other folds after getting the base, but you should end up with something like this (that is, if you can figure out the CP):

Death

Its not often that you see someone fold death out of paper. However, I couldn't think of anything to fold for the french forum challenge (playing with light) other than this. The idea came from the somewhat well known sayings about "going to the light when you die" and so on. So I decided to use foil to reflect my light source. Sadly, this model didn't exactly turn out well. However, heres the CP that I made before I folded it:


Which should turn into something like (or better than) this model. DOn't forget the large color change

Xylotrupes Gideon... again?

Today, I had a breakthrough in origami that I'm sure that other people have already had. You can (quite easily) convert your boxpleated designs to new 22.5° angle based designs. I had actually been thinking about trying this for a few days, but I wasn't sure that it would really work. However, I tried it out anyway and had myself a new Xylotrupes Gideon!
The original had this CP, from a 16:16 grid:


Which I converted to this:


This will certainly change how I design. This shows that now, I can actually design 22.5° angle based models from CPs, because they're so similar to boxpleated models. Hopefully, I'll figure out the small glitches with the conversion, and then I'll be able to design quite easily once again.



The original design can be found here.

Broccoli

I've always liked the taste of broccoli. I especially like the taste of the small green leaves at the top. This months challenge on the English origami forum is food, which is often quite a hard thing to fold. I guess I just took it easy, and folded a plant. However, I hope to design something that isn't a fruit or vegetable later on this month. The CP isn't really boxpleating, but it is from a 10:10 grid.


The model doesn't really turn out as the common round broccoli, but rather some sort of mangled broccoli with large leaves. But it can still be easily shaped into the vegetable.



Now to figure out what to fold for the french forum challenge...

Eagle Dancer

This design was sort of... accidental in a way. But thats not too bad, because many of my designs were made that way. I was trying the base for Charles Esseltines Dragon in Flight Head, and I ended up folding it like a fractal. The part in the middle kept getting small and smaller as I did the same thing over and over again with the little flap. Heres the CP for what I ended up with:


Then, I folded some flaps down and squashed a few, and I made the long flaps into wings. I ended up with something that has a head, a make like an eagle, two wings and two feet. To me, it looked just like a Native American Eagle Dancer, so thats what I decided to call the model.

Happy Birthday, or whatever else

Today, I went to someones birthday. The person having the birthday had some japanese foil, which he decided to give me because he only used it once. I'm quite happy with this, because I just happened to be low on japanese foil.
Anyways, I was thinking of what to fold this month as I do every month, and the birthday inspired me to fold a balloon on a string. Sadly, I didn't get to give him it because I left before it was completely finished.
Here is the CP that I ended up with. Rectangles make ball shapes quite well, so I used an idea that I was thinking of about a week ago. It's not exactly boxpleating, but its divided into 32 across. The red lines are reference lines, 1/2 and 1/4


And heres what you're balloon should end up like. Enjoy!