Friday, April 10, 2009

A Pleasant Surprise

Some designs can really be surprising, sometimes in a good way. That would be when they end up better than you intended them to. I was trying a think of something to fold when I came up with the idea of folding a simple pureland stegosaurus. This turned out to be harder than I thought it would, so I decided to go without the pureland. I folded a square section with 1/8 diagonal lines just to test whether I could make the plates from it much from it, in the same way as Joseph Wu's One-fold Stegosaurus. This test turned out as a full model with a strange CP. Heres what I mean:
Stegosaurus CP

Some of the details from the base aren't very obvious. The scales are there, as are the head and tail. Theres also these two other flaps that make up the legs. They have to be folded down with a rabbit ear fold and then shaped. On one side, the back leg part has to be stretched so that the legs will match up. The tail just needs some small folds to get the spikes up, while the eye parts of the head need to be squashed.
Stegosaurus, Ryan MacDonell
Stegosaurus, Ryan MacDonell

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Joyeux Pâques

Its just about easter time, time for the bunny to come out of his den, see the sunlight, and not care if he can see his shadow or not. I intended to just fold a rabbit and instead ended up with a humanoid rabbit, or the Easter Bunny. For this model, I actually designed using circle packing, which is a very strange and messy method when it come to actually making something. However, it worked. I just put on all of the circles and connected the vertices (centers of the circles) with folds. Here is what I ended up with, including how to get the important folds on the sides. Easter Bunny Guide Easter Bunny CP The model does have a strange base, but you can tell where each of the parts come from. After folding the base, the leg section has to be squashed and the head part folded down. Then you can fold the head up and flatten it for the face, and form the tail, legs, arms and ears. the tail is color changed unless you fold the corner over the showing colored section. Easter Bunny, Ryan MacDonell Easter Bunny, Ryan MacDonell

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

Quick, Fish!

This morning, I had one of my first experiences with rapid designing. It is april fool's day, and I decided that I should fold some fish to stick on the back's of my french teachers. The reason is in french, april 1st is "Poisson d'avril", where people stick paper fish on other peoples backs. Anyways, I used those rectangles that I get left over from copy paper (of which I have hundreds). I found out that using half of it works best, so I used a 4.75 by 2.5 inch rectangle. No CP, but I'll try my best at a good explanation. Fold one of the smaller edges over by about an inch. Then fold the corners at the folded edge back at 45° angles, touching on the folded edge. Fold the remaining rectangle section (the part not already folded at all) in half. Fold about a 22.5° angle on the top and bottom, with the angle starting where the 45° angles end. Inside reverse fold along those lines, and fold the flap that is behind as far a possible without adding extra folds. Then make the tail smaller, and you're done! Here is what mine looks like. Not bad for something made from a strange rectangle in 30 seconds.
Poisson d'Avril, Ryan MacDonell

It is also possible to edit it so that it has fins, a more detailed tail, etc. Because of the simple base, lots of variations are possible! Also, the head color changes if you use non-copy paper.