K-Dron: Finally Finished

After weeks of making the shape called a K-Dron, I finally managed to fold one myself. I make the shape again and again out of paper, finding out more and more ways to reduce the cutting and increase the folds. Eventually, I made a model that required only one small cut, which I knew that I could easily fix. However, there was ans still is a major problem with this model, one that I don't really know how to fix. No matter what you fold it with (unless you use sheets of thick metal, perhaps), it ends up not being able to stay closed on its own. This problem can be fixed in a non-purist way by using glue or tape, but I still would rather it done by folding alone. I didn't bother making a CP because of this.
To make the model, I first planned on how it would be done by making the faces connected to the correct places. Then I simply found a way to fold the basic outline from a rectangle, and added pleats to make slits so that no small cuts would be required. Here is a picture of my K-Dron:


I'm now planning on showing the shape to Tomohiro TACHI, because I am pretty sure that this model is possible using his origamizer program.

Podium

I decided to stick with the Olympic theme for my next design when I was wondering what to fold next. I had been thinking before of making a podium from the center of the paper, but hadn't figured out how yet. I didn't really expect it to be as hard as it was. I based my model on Shonen's method of making 3D shapes. However, I couldn't simply make 3 blocks for the podium, so I added some of my own ideas. I started with a 16:16 grid and used the middle 4 squares as the top square of the highest podium. I decided that the middle would be the height of a cube, the left one would be 2/3rds that height and the right would be 1/3 the height. I then made a square 1/3 to the left of the middle square and another 2/3rds to the right. I used Shonen's building block fold to put them at the heights and folded them back out halfway to keep the outer faces. Then I simply finished the model with some more building block folds on the corners. All of that led to this:


If that isn't enough description, Here is a CP. It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally have it.

For the Olympics

Lately, I had the idea of folding one or more things from the Beijing 2008 Olympics. I decided to start off with what had all the popularity lately, swimming (seeing as Michael Phelps has been winning all those golds, he is up to 7 as of now). I started off planning on making a design inside a square so that the model features the swimmer and the pool. However, after folding it, I realized that there was no color change possible for the swimmer, unless all of the side were folded in, making the model need a huge piece of paper. I was thinking that maybe I could get away with a little non-purism and adding a flesh colored square to the center for the swimmer. However, I remembered Bernie Peyton's Swimming Polar Bear which gave me the idea for my current model. I made the model from a full 16:16 grid rather than a grid inside of the square, and made the excess paper into the water behind the swimmer. Here is my CP:


The trick is to use the same color background as the water side of the paper. Because I used tissue foil, I put a sheet of tissue paper on top of a sheet of foil as the background. The bottom points on the CP make the face, and the two others are the arms. The top edge is folded over to make a color change.

The Cutest

By that title, I don't mean to say that my kitten is going to win the Cute challenge on the english forum, I'm just saying that I think kittens are cute. I've seen hundreds of kittens over the years. I decided that I should try folding a cat again, seeing as the last one didn't end up so well, and then just made a large head to make a kitten. I'm quite happy with the result, and hope to experiment a bit more with the model until I get four good legs. Here is the CP: Even the finished base looks cute, although it looks more like a mouse with a short tail. With a few folds on the face, and a bit of tweaking to the ears and legs, it should end up looking like a little kitten, something like this:

A... Tessellation?

Yes, I finally dove (dived?) into the strange world of tessellations. I decided to have another go at folding a puff star, and this time I was much more successful than the last, and I started folding a whole bunch of puff star variations by adding closed sinks. Finally, I got bored of that and decided to try making my own unit. I started with the hexagon twist, made three open sinks, three closed sinks, and a squash to form a smaller hexagon. Then I repeated the whole thing again, and finally folded the sides of the third hexagon towards the center radially. This resulted in the following tessellation.


I decided to name this the Starflower Unit, because no only does it resemble a star and a flower, but also a tiny white starflower.
I don't think I'll be doing much more in the way of tessellations, mainly because I don't have nearly enough large pieces of paper. However, I hope to be able to use tessellations as textures on realistic pieces in the future.

Jellyfish

Last month, I visited an aquarium. Seeing as this month's challenge on the french origami forum is Postcards from your Summer Vacation, I decided to stick with something simple. This lead me to fold a jellyfish like the ones in the aquarium. Here is the (somewhat incorrect) CP that I used: I didn't put in all the lines, but you can see that the middle point (after the 11.25° lines are collapsed) is squashed into an imperfect octagon. Then the many points become tentacles.

Its Raining, its Pouring

After a two week break of (mostly) not folding while I was in Vancouver, I'm back at it again. As soon as I got back, we had some fairly rainy days, and yesterday was the worst. Yesterday morning (while it was raining on and off), I decided to fold a rain cloud using pretty much the same idea as my lightning model, except much simpler. Here is the CP that I used, which can also make a mushroom.


The top shape folds over to form the cloud, and the bottom rectangle can be divided in 16 (or whatever else) to form the rain. The pictures were taken during the brief period of sunshine yesterday.