Sssssssssss...

Every so often when browsing through my contacts photos on flickr, I come across a subject that just screams at me to give it a try. I've mentioned in past articles how some folders will just fold the same subject as other folders until suddenly (for example) there are 8 new loon designs by different authors. This time however it was the comment under the photo that got my attention. Juston Hairgrove recently designed a Creeper (from the popular game Minecraft) and wrote "I may revisit the subject matter if I can hone my BP skills enough to put a color change face on it."

My immediate reaction was to make just the face, seeing as I've been making plenty of colour change models lately and the pattern is very simple. The first few drafts from a windmill base turned out to be missing part of the mouth. Also, I realized that the design from the windmill base couldn't possibly be added to a body. My next few drafts worked on making the face from the edge instead so that a body could be added. Pretty soon I started working on the body (despite not intending to), and I could tell right away that I didn't have enough paper to make the closed, seamless form of Juston's model. Instead, I had to deal with an open back and annoying seam down the middle of the body. I also didn't have much to make the legs out of, so my final solution was to simply add a pleat to look like the separation between front and back legs. Here is my crease pattern:


If the CP looks a bit strange, that is because it's actually two CPs combined. Outside of the grey box is the CP for the face pattern. After that, you're left with a rectangle the size of the grey box with the face. The folds shown inside the box are the folds used on the body. With plenty of tweaking, you should end up with something like this little fellow:


But wait, there's more! For the origami artists reading this, I'm sure someone could make a better creeper body than what I made. My original idea was to collaborate with Juston and make a face for his model, but after making it I could tell that there wouldn't be enough paper. If you do make a new body, let me know and I will be happy to feature it here!

Hurry Up, Olympics!

I've always loved sports in general, so its safe to say that the Olympics is a pretty big deal to me (after the FIFA World Cup, of course). I'm now finding that the Olympics are a lot farther off than expected.

I've had the idea to fold the London 2012 logo for the past couple months, and I started working on it over a month ago. Unfortunately, I didn't have much motivation to work on it seeing as the Olympics aren't for another month; however, this weekend after folding a few more drafts I finally decided that the model was ready. I originally tried to use a windmill base, but I found that I didn't have enough paper to make the sharp corners in the logo. Instead, I ended up "blintz-ing" the windmill base to end up with this crease pattern:


Even with the extra paper to use for colour changes, the 2nd number 2 took several tries to get a decent result. I realized pretty early on that I wouldn't be making an exact replica of the logo, so I decided to focus only on the individual numbers rather than the layout of the entire logo. My result:


The model itself is almost entirely free-folded with little to no references, a technique which always makes replicating the model interesting. Sure, I may be a bit early but this leaves me plenty more time to fold more model (Olympic or otherwise) as I wait for July 27th! I also realized that I didn't post an update on my "origami achievements" (which is mostly for myself to look back at), so hopefully I remember to do that in a couple weeks.

On the Nose

For some reason one night I had the idea to fold a giraffe from a pentagon. For some reason that struck me as a good use of a pentagon, seeing as one corner could go completely into making the neck while the rest could make the legs and body. The first attempt, as always, was a complete failure and I thought I would probably give up there. Oddly, I kept making one new attempt per day and the models gradually got more giraffe-like as I tried. Finally, the 5th try actually looked right so I went with it. Here is the CP:


It's pretty clear from the CP what each part is, but getting the details might be a bit trickier. The neck can be thinned to half the width and the front legs are made by a rabbit ear. The rest is just a question of closed sinks to thin the body as well as details on the head. The head took me a few drafts to be happy with, but if you look closely you can see that it includes horns and ears.