A Simple Cottage Roof

No building is complete without a roof, so why don't we make? Here's a really simple one that's actually derived from the Building Block itself. After making one, you can stack it on a building block to make a simple house.

Roof first, then:




This CP bears a marked resemblance with the Building Block, doesn't it?

After a little experimentation, you should get this:



Sorry about the messy background.

Note the pleats on the right:




The roof is pretty loose and needs the help of a building block under it to lock the flaps down into a house:



Nice and neat.

As mentioned in the previous post, you must experiment with the model yourself to get it right.

By now, you should have realised the absolute importance of the heavy precreasing. Saves a lot of trouble, doesn't it? (Well actually it brings all the trouble to the front. As the chinese say, 先苦后甜.)

I apologise for the apparent lack of text in this post, I'll try to make it up in future posts...

As usual, good luck!


Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Preparations for Demonstrations

The only reason why this became a post is because it took me a lot of effort.
And, of course, I forgot to post it before the one on Building Blocks.

Well, to show you guys what my techniques will probably result in, I decided to demonstrate to you all on a huge sheet of precreased paper. Well, I got a really gigantic piece of paper from the stationary shop, so it wouldn't make sense if I precreased too little on the paper. Thus, I decided to precrease a 64 x 64 grid, certainly the most I've ever done. It took me quite a few weeks, partly because I was lazy, but the end result was great.



You may want to compare this to other pictures in this blog and speculate about the size of the paper yourself.

If you do the math, I will have created 4096 little squares and folded 126 creases by the end of this project.

I even played around with the finished paper, forming a cute sort of spiral:



I hope this teaches you a lesson about the causes and effects of paper drift.

Enough now, let's fast-forward to Demo No.1: Building Block!



A solitary building the the midle of the desert.
If you can't imagine how the CP evolves into this, here's a useful picture of each of the four pleats going in the four directions:



That ought to help.

I mentioned about stacking building blocks on one another, so here goes:



I hope this picture helps you understand how the blocks are stacked on one another.
The blocks can even be made into towers by stacking equally-sized blocks on each other.



Wow. That's got to be the clearest picture I've taken...

Picture of pleats of the tower:



That should be enough now.

This CP is not exactly one of the hardest ones, but it requires plenty of self-exploration and a vivid imagination, and there is only so much I can instruct you without folding it in front of your face. Good luck!

(Subsequent CPs will include their demos in their own posts.)


Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

Building Blocks of a City

A very long time before I consorted with crease patterns, I had played with precreased (albeit heavily) paper, and I found out what I thought and still think is a new type of folding: Creating structures and other buildings from a simple piece of paper, with the folded structures sticking out of the paper. No sides/edges are to be used, such that several structures can be linked together (with the remaining paper form the floor) to form something like a city.

The first sub-structure I chanced upon was the Building Block. It is a way of creating a cuboid shape rising above the paper. The building block technique can be repeated upon itself again and again, so a tall building appears.

Here's a CP depicting the building block technique:


The raised platform (the black square in the middle) can be of any rectangular shape. To repeat this technique on the same structure, just make sure the original raised block is within the new raised platform. Take note that although the technique can be repeated, it does not allow for the new raised platform to be smaller than the original raised block.

This technique is rather similar to boxpleating, the difference being it has a 3-D result. In the next few posts, I will introduce more techniques to you guys so that you will be able to create a whole virtual city by yourself!



Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

My First Dragon

As I was studying the different bases that appear in Origami, I realised that bases could be a quick shortcut in the process of creation. At that time, I was trying to create simply (and rather vaguely) a monster, and thus I fiddled around with the paper until I arrived at a cute little base derived from the waterbomb base. Here you go...


Upon further analysis, I found out that this is essentially a blintzed bird base.

Subsequently, I folded my monster out of it, but it wasn't terribly satisfactory and thus I have forgotten how to fold it due to lack of practice.

It wasn't long, however, when I strove to improve on this base. It appeared that bases could evolve into more advanced ones with many more points through the process of blintzing, which invloves folding the 4 corners of the square to the centre and using the new folded square to fold the base. The flaps that come from the blintzing can be pulled out abd after some reshaping, a new base emerges.

Well, I tried the blintzing method on the Monster Base and it worked well, transforming my boring little base into a much more interesting one: the Super Monster Base. (Please do not criticise my naming, I'm just sticking to the name I gave it literally years ago. =)



Okay, so it looks pretty but it also looks pretty different from the monster base. However, with a little experimentation, you'll find out that it is indeed a blintzed monster base.

Of course, I simply must find something good to fold from the base, and my first choice was Monster mark two. It turned out really nice, with claws and wings and many other things and I was very satisfied with it. However, I still forgot about it.

So, quite naturally (many other folders will agree with me), my next choice was a dragon. It was grand and majestic, with claws and wings and many many many other things. Here's a photo of it:






Just look at those huge spikes. Wow.

Admittedly, the head looks more like one of an eagle or griffin than that of a dragon. But with those huge wings and big spikes, what could be better?

I bet you're itching to fold this beauty, so here's the CP:


Just to help, the edge grafts are as wide as 1/8 of the side of the starting square.
Unfortunately, I'm a very lazy guy and I neglected to put any creases on the edge grafts. Just treat the paper as unfolded after the edge grafts, it'll work out right.
Stretch your imagination when folding the squares allocated for the head and tail!
Just for an interesting challenge, can you reverse-engineer from the photos to find out how I folded my head and tail?

It looks horribly complicated and doesn't seem to have a connection with the super monster base at all... Still, I would encourage experienced folders to try folding the dragon from the base.

Even the CP looks beautiful...
Good luck folding the CP!


Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen

A Common Source of Inspiration

Again, this model was created years ago. I have not folded it for an equally long time, yet I have not forgotten one bit of the instructions. You will find out why soon enough...

I had been playing with a piece of paper in my mind while in the washroom, when I discovered a folding sequence that would give me some sort of module that if 4 of them were pieced together would form a box.

Eagerly, I tried it out on a real piece of scrap paper and it worked out really well. That was years ago, yet now, I folded it again without a single mistake, due to the fact that it had only 5 steps.
Even so, doing the diagram would be tedious, and I doubt anyone would fail to recreate the box perfectly from a CP with enough practice and patience.

So, here it is:



A Modular Box made of 4 Modules. A glance at the module CP then...



I told you it was easy.

The module will come out like this:



For assembling modular origami, 2 things you need to take note of are where the pockets are and which flaps to stick into which pockets. In some models the flaps and pockets are rather obvious, which may not be the case for this model, but I encourage folders to try this out (especially as it is just as easy as it looks) and find out for themselves the flap/pocket combos.

The more inquisitive folders will ask with a furrowed brow: "What if I want to make the box higher? It looks so flat... can I edit the CP such that I can get a cubic box, or even a tall, long one?"
The answer: look at the bottom section of the CP. The 2 squares you see there are the only parts of the CP that cannot be edited. The top half can be lengthened as you like, so long as in the folding process it is folded in half like the CP to lock the "walls" together. In fact, I once made a cubic box using black and gold paper with the dimensions 1:1.5, made a matching lid (using slightly larger paper and folding a flatter box) and my mother was so ecstatic about it that she used it to contain a present that she gave an exchange student staying at our house. It's rather a pity that I don't have it with me now...

Well, there can be several variations to this simple box, and if you have any interesting ideas please contact me or leave a comment!

Lastly, I had made a curious observation about the box: It appears that there is a secret "pocket" hidden between the 2 layers that make up the lid or base of the box.


Origami as Pure as Snow
shonen