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

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.

They can do that?

I only found out yesterday that herons can bend their knees backwards. I guess now that I think of it, other birds (like flamingos) can too. I guess it wasn't something that I really thought about. This month on the english origami forum, the challenge is Models from a triangle. I was thinking tessellation at first and I tried to fold one from a 45-45-90 triangle. Once I figured out that I wasn't going to get anything nice, I tried something more like my usual models. I ended up with long neck, long legs and a fairly small body. With a bit of details, it became a heron! I was just about to fold the final model this morning when I found out that I could open sink the legs back to make the wings go farther back on the body, so I had to go back and refold it some more. Here is the CP that I got after that:


There are quite a few details for this model. The neck can go up with a double rabbit ear, and the legs should be folded thinner and so that they are color changed. Where the wings stick out on the back can be tucked in. two outside reverse folds on the neck can make a curved chape, and then you can fold the head and thin the front to make the beak. Here is what I ended up with: