The conception of this model was quite straightforward. I was trying to get a proper back half for a dove I had been working on to no avail. I had the thought that a fish base might be more conducive to my interests. At the very least, I could keep the structure for the legs. And voila. Not even ten minutes later and I had a finished bird in my hands. It wasn’t what I expected, and the design isn’t the most accurate to its subject, but it’s cute, so who cares.
This is another of my earlier designs. It uses a simple level shifter to create the back, and the legs are made in a rather John Montroll-esque manner. Fold two corners into the center before folding the rest of the model.
I may have designed this model in a dream. I recall stumbling out of bed and groping for a square of paper before folding out this model in a near completed state. The only thing that has changed is some of the shaping on the head.
Born from a doodle while enjoying the gloaming at a park. After several refinements, it became what you see now. There is a better shaping that results in a more organic lower wing, but the steps were omitted from the tutorial as they involved a complicated unwrap. I leave it as an exercise for the viewer. (Try to mimic the grey model.)
This design is one of my oldest and arose from a casual doodle. Frustrated, I unraveled the whole sheet, and when I had reassembled it, I saw a butterfly. And the rest is history.
Great Blue Herons are the largest of the herons present in North America. Of majestic size, their height ranges from 97-137 cm. Population estimates are rough due to the birds’ wide range, but there are at least several hundred thousand in the wild.
This design started off as a doodle from a six inch square of that ubiquitous origami paper (kami) you can find installed in every art or crafts store and bookstore chain outlet. The neck was stubby and the head was folded to peer behind into the distance. While I liked the pose, the model had only one leg and was concernedly overweight.
Frankly, it might be unwise to consider that doodle to be a previous iteration of the current model; the only similarities between the two are the pair of reverse folds on each side of the head. After the first burst of inspiration, I used a large strip graft down the diagonal in an attempt to lengthen the neck and leg. In the end, nothing got longer, but I did get two legs. Unfortunately this version had an excess of material at the center of the paper that had to be hidden with an unwieldy sink. Enlightened, I realized that that I should stop making things harder for myself, and change the packing so that the legs are placed at the corners (long flaps are easier to fashion out of the corner of the paper). A quick test fold indicated that this direction was promising. Several grafts later, I had achieved a longer neck and legs, as well as extra paper for toes. But I soon realized that grafts were not the answer, and removed one graft. The remaining strip of paper extended along the diagonal from the head to the tail and allowed for the detailed curvature of the coverts of the wings, tail feathers, as well as the color-changed beak and eyes. I folded the final model from a hand-painted sheet of Japanese foil, and most of the final shaping on the neck, wings, and tail originated at this stage. I’ll have to share my color mixes at some point.
