A dragonfly
Since cavemanboon has asked so nicely, here’s something more down-to-earth for him:
A dragonfly
This is quite a straightforward design – no excessive tentacles, claws and whatnot. As with other origami dragonflies, edge flaps are used to produce the thin narrow legs. Diagonal rather than book symmetry is used, so that the scale of the final model is maximised.
Square Packing
Because of the simplicity of the model, the grid is only 28×28. This means the folded flaps would end up being rather fat, but that’s nothing that a little MC-folding can’t fix. The smaller aspect ratio also means less pleats and fewer layers for the wings.
Partial and full CPs
Folding this is a matter of finding the thinnest, strongest paper available.
Side view of dragonfly
After applying some WD-40
The curvature of the eyes is a problem as usual. There’s only so much you can do to approximate a hemisphere before everything ends up looking really crumpled.
October 7th, 2006 at 5:36 am
hi wolf, hope u were still able to get a good view of the full moon thru the haze over there in singapore last night. the haze is pretty bad over here too.
ok, dragonflies i can definitely relate to. a couple of years ago, i spent many mornings chasing them all over the singapore botanical gardens with my digital camera. beautiful subjects.
nice model all in all. if u allow me to nitpick, the head looks kind of big, proportionally speaking. furthermore, i think the body tapers a tad too drastically, although that is probably not a design problem and may be corrected easily by folding it a bit differently.
i am a CP illiterate (well, almost and at least for now). so, i can’t comment on that aspect.
October 7th, 2006 at 5:43 am
sorry, one more thing – did u use “butter paper” to fold this model? and u mentioned that u applied WD-40. what’s that?
October 7th, 2006 at 5:58 am
We could barely see it when it was close to the horizon. Now it’s looking as though it’s going through a total eclipse. Smells awful too, even with all the windows closed.
The model’s MC-folded from Thai unryu, about 15gsm. WD-40 is general purpose lubricant that’s used for sewing machines, bikes and the like. It’s not too evident from the photos, but it makes the wings translucent.
I’m not too pleased with the head myself – I spent a while puzzling over how to get it rounded and just went with a hollow shell with some curved folds. I’ve thought up another method of trying to get the eyes though – pretty much just roll everything up as tight as possible – we’ll see how that looks in the next revision. For the tail, I was working purely from memory and I just narrowed it down to a point. Which is anatomically incorrect, as I found out, it does get bigger near the end. Like you said, this can be fixed by not narrowing that flap down as much.
October 7th, 2006 at 7:03 am
this is getting really crazy. the powers that be really should do something about this haze problem …
oh, u folded with thai unryu. and the thickness is around 15 gsm? all this while i was guessing that it is somewhere in the range of 20-30 gsm … i asked the staff at fancy papers once but she didn’t know.
as for WD-40, noted but doesn’t it make your model oily???
October 7th, 2006 at 4:49 pm
Looking better this morning, fortunately, maybe the winds aren’t pointing in our direction. Hopefully it stays that way!
Yep, 15gsm; I haven’t actually weighed it but it feels about right. Asked a friend from Thailand to source it for me directly – more variety and cheaper too (20-30 cents per sheet).
Only the wings were coated with oil. Once it gets absorbed it feels okay though, sort of like the grease paper you use for cooking.
October 7th, 2006 at 8:20 pm
good for u all. over here, there isn’t much improvement yet.
regarding thai unryu, noted. i have got a couple more things to ask u but since they will be kind of off-topic, i will email u separately another time.
as for the oil, if the paper feels like grease paper than i guess it’s still tolerable. if i remember correctly, i have heard folders saying varnishes and even certain kinds of glue can render some papers translucent. perhaps u might also want to try those stuff.
October 8th, 2006 at 12:40 am
No problem, just email any time – the address that you have is still valid.
MC doesn’t turn paper translucent, neither does PVA or PVAL glue. I’ve got a waterbased varnish that has this effect, though not as good as the oil. I might try that on my next version. There’s also a can of brasso somewhere I could use.
October 8th, 2006 at 5:19 am
brasso??!! u are really wicked, wolf.
ok, it’s time i make myself scarce. your fellow fantasy/SF enthusiasts must be getting impatient reading about a “lowly” dragonfly. and i shouldn’t discuss down-to-earth subjects with u too much and risk spoiling your reputation …
.
will shoot u an email later.
October 9th, 2006 at 7:28 am
Well, working on the next version now, and I guess I should get around to finishing the other half-folded models scattered all over my workspace
October 10th, 2006 at 5:16 pm
ok then, looking forward to seeing your next version. hope to see your fauna designs of the finned variety soon too.
October 12th, 2006 at 12:15 pm
Please excuse my ignorance, but I couldn´t find it in my dictionary, what is brasso?
By the way, very nice design also if I had hoped for a “real” mad cat once, but a dragonfly is also good
October 12th, 2006 at 3:18 pm
Brasso’s the trade name of a metal polish from the UK:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brasso
It’s very common in stores around here.
And the Mad Cat is short for Mad Catapult – not after the feline!
October 13th, 2006 at 5:20 am
Thanks for the informations.
Nevertheless I would have prefered a feline model, my first thought on mad cat was this: http://img81.imageshack.us/img81/6852/grinsekatzeoc4.jpg , I had never suspected a robot.
October 14th, 2006 at 4:52 am
That would be something interesting to do, although I recall that someone’s already done a Cheshire cat model somewhere.
A baka neko/neko basu would be pretty cool too!
October 14th, 2006 at 6:13 am
Agreed!