origami 'n' stuff I made..

I realised today that it's been a long time since I showed watmm my latest projects. These aren't even that recent - none was made within the last year - but I only took photos of them today.

All these shapes are various interpretations of the dodecahedron - one of the five Platonic solids, which consists of 12 pentagonal faces (think 12-sided die, all you D&D nerds).

This one is very sturdy, took lots of interwoven strips of paper to make (90!) and contains a spherical prism trapped inside.

Here's another view of it, in some healthy clover growing outside my front door. Notice the ring of green on the face oriented towards the camera. The colour scheme on this one is like that all around - rings in one of five colours.

This one contains a related cousin, albeit one that's much easier to make and contains a lot less pieces. The one on the left is squishy - you can smash it down and it will pop back into shape. The other one is quite rigid; you'd have to use a lot of force to deform it. That's one of the main things I aim for when designing a new shape - durability. You could use the right one as a (tiny) soccer ball all day without seriously damaging it.

This last one isn't origami at all, but is woven together using different lengths of very tough, ridged white plastic straws which are strung together with fishing wire. The straws all came from boxes of little vials of ginseng extract, and are tough enough to pierce the rubber & metal lids. The form I made with them is a variation of a snub dodecahedron, with beams that traverse through the centre of the form. The formula giving the ratio between the long & short pieces is very complicated and took a long time to work out.. The shape I made with the straws is very interesting to me: it's basically a very strong & flexible spherical cage, with twelve "portholes". This arrangement would be ideal for containing a spherical shape which is highly pressurized with respect to the outside - the interlacing beams would be able to withstand a huge force. Also, none of the beams would have to be compromised with bolts or other attachments in the middles - the only place they need to be joined is at the ends. I'd love to one day scale up this shape & make it huge.. maybe use metal poles & steel cables.

It's really hard to get an idea of the exact arrangement from this photo. I'll try and shoot it again when the sun is a bit lower & the shadow is longer.

looks pretty tedious but pretty fun. The paper used for the first ones is just gross though.

!!!! yay :grin: :turned: :stuart: :arrow: :clover:

that's some pretty boc stuff right there

How long did it take you to make each of these?

those are ill

where did you learn to do that?

idm

alien technology

  Capsaicin said:

How long did it take you to make each of these?

first one - a few weeks

second one - a few hours

ball o' straws - few weeks

  rocky path said:

those are ill

where did you learn to do that?

I didn't; all self-taught

teach us

heh, I'd love to! I've been meaning to write a book for years now. The problem is, the instructions would have to be fully 3D rendered for them to make any sense at all. The typical origami instruction protocol of "crease here, fold over here" just wouldn't cut it.. A while back, I downloaded a free Auto-CAD program, but it was really difficult to render the shapes I was working with in it. I just need to get a cracked 3D illustration program, I think.. or maybe Wolfram Research's Mathematica would do the trick (it has really good polyhedral rendering functions).

nice work

  Glass Plate said:

looks pretty tedious but pretty fun.

It can be pretty tedious, yeah. I usually do the grunt work while watching tv or a movie. It's very meditative, unless it's a really difficult part that takes a lot of concentration.

  Glass Plate said:

The paper used for the first ones is just gross though.

I'm kind of sick of it too.. unfortunately it's the only brand (yasutomo "fold 'ems" holographic) that is durable enough for what I want - it's not paper at all, but plastic bonded to a very thin layer of aluminium.

this is pretty fucking cool to say the least

  Quote

I'd love to one day scale up this shape & make it huge.. maybe use metal poles & steel cables.

qft. i'd love to see some bright steel cables coming out of some deep bronze pipes . . maybe colored steel, but i don't know how that's done.

  bronchuseven said:

i like this one. it's very electronic music

that is some amazing folding you got there! i'm sure your art would be welcome in japan anytime! would like to see some of the folding steps for some of those!

i made a froggy

I MADE A BALL

lol

bronchuseven is electronic music!

I like to make this vase sometimes to impress people:

Modular origami is very strange.

  hexagon son said:

that is some amazing folding you got there! i'm sure your art would be welcome in japan anytime!

Thanks. Do you think I should try selling a few on yahoo japan?

  hexagon son said:

would like to see some of the folding steps for some of those!

Well, the actual folding element of these pieces is pretty minimal; each sheet is folded into a triangular grid and then cut into strips of equal length & width. The strips are then woven together like a basket, with each strip forming a closed loop once the whole is completed - I make the strips a bit longer than they need to be so there's overlap. The tension of the strips pulling on each other is enough to keep the shape together without glue. Some of my designs are really strong - I've seen dog-mauled ones that weren't unraveled at all, just a bit deformed ;)

If I remember to, I'll take some photos of my next piece as it's being woven together.