Category: Origami

Happy Autumn, Part II

More works in progress:

I’ve started work on a new song, “Who Can Fool Me?” Sort of an angry and defiant song, inspired as a response to how people in authority use lies and manipulation to maintain their power: the government, corporations, the media, etc. It’s basically a jazz blues in C minor, played in a stride style. But it’s dressed up by a 7/8 time and lots of chromatic harmonic movement for a sort of tense, edgy feeling. It’s coming together relatively quickly, which is nice. Got the arrangement worked out, got rhythm section down, and a MIDI sketch of a horns and strings, and did first pass at the vocals last night. I will do one more pass at that as I am still finalizing the lyrics.

Work on my origami book continues. I’m close to being done with diagramming my moose. This is a long one, over 60 steps so far. It’ll probably end up just a few short of 70. This one will present some new challenges when I do the page layout, since the size and shape of the individual step drawing very greatly, I’ll need to expand my palette of layout templates. I’m folding a moose as I do the diagrams. I had folded my previous mooses out of Wyndstone Marble paper, but that is no longer available in the United States. So I’ve been searching for some new and different kinds of origami paper recently. For this one I ended up using a piece of paper called Tant that I ordered from Nicolas Terry in France. It’s working out very nicely. Very strong and reasonably thin, very workable, and it comes in largish (35cm) sheets. I would love to be able to get the stuff even larger (like 50cm). Anyway, you check out Nicolas’s origami shop and order the stuff here.

Another project I’ve decided to start on this fall is to redesign the origami section of my web site. I’ve been wanting to do this since the summer. I had a big burst of creativity last May and June, and came up with eight new models in that period, and since then of course I’ve decided to so a book. The big problem with this is my web site is really old. Parts of it date back to 1995, which is truly ancient in internet time. I’ve added on it over the years, but the core is flat html. So the origami galleries don’t scale well, and every time I add a new model it’s a fair amount of hand coding. I want to completely redo it, with a more modern looking, CMS-backed, Javacript-driven front end. Maybe something like this. BTW, Giang Dihn is my favorite origami artist out there right now. His stuff is so lyrical and flowing, so beautiful.

But that’s a rather large endeavor, beginning with researching available code libraries and seeing how they fit in with my design concept. So it will have to wait. Meanwhile I’m overhauling the current set of pages on last time. I swear this is it. The most labor-intensive part of this is I have to photograph all my models and bring them into photoshop to size the images. This is something I’ll need to do anyway for my book. But the more I do it, the higher my standards get, and I’m starting to realize I need a better camera or better lighting setup, or maybe just need to become a better photographer. Ah well another bridge I’ll cross when I get there. For this rev I’ll just use the pictures I have.

Lastly, I spent some time last weekend with the girls on the movie Rollercoaster of Cheese, their little timeline animation project. Created the soundtrack by editing together and layering 3 takes of our the voiceover. Showed them how to use Audacity, a simple but reasonably powerful audio editor for the PC. Brought the soundtrack into Flash. The next and last step is the actually animation, using the library of drawing they built up.

This led to us exploring some old multimedia pieces I have on my web site. So here’s some shockwave stuff from a few years ago. Enjoy!

http://zingman.com/mmedia/index.html

Origami Book Start

If you’ll recall, I decided back in June on the last day of the Origami USA annual convention to write an origami book of my original models. How’s it going, you might ask. Well I’m glad you asked. It’s off to a good start.

I’ve competed diagrams for three models in the last two months. Two of them, the Hot Air Balloon and the Loon, are all-new. The third, the Canoe, is an update of a model that I’d already diagrammed. The update is nontrivial because I’m now using a new process and a new style. I really want to get my diagramming up to the next level. There’s really no point in doing a book unless it’s excellent.

My old way of working was to use Flash to generate the steps and then animate them into a sfw for publication on the web. This was a pretty good way to share diagrams without having to worry too much about people ripping them off. It’s really hard to make printouts from a sfw. On top of that, I’ve been submitting a model every year to the OUSA annual collection, and to generate this document I would just export the frames from Flash and paste them into a Word document.

This approach was not very flexible, and had some drawbacks. Foremost, the diagrams were designed to look good on a computer screen not a printed page. I used various shades of light and dark grey instead of black and white. I drew them so one step would fill the screen, where in print the diagram for a step is less than 2 inches square. So I ran thru a series of experiments to get things to look better in print. The colors (now just simple black and white and 30 percent grey), the line weights for edges and creases, the line weights and dash lengths for mountain and valley folds, and sizes of the arrows all underwent some serious scrutiny. I’ve been checking my collection of origami books for all the various stylistic choices to see which ones I want to follow. Also I’ve started using zoomed-in drawings for details, which is something I’ve not really done before. I’ve started breaking down complex steps into series of simpler steps, which is tedious but worth it. I made a lot of test printouts to see how things look in actual size. I need to take my diagrams and print them out on different printers.

The other thing I did was to start using some real page layout software. I’m using InDesign from Adobe, and it’s very well-suited to my needs. I can import the steps as eps images and freely mix graphics and text areas, and build flexible templates. The whole app is designed with professional print designers in mind, the modern day descendant of Aldus PageMaker. I’m sure it can do way more powerful stuff, but for these common tasks it’s really a breeze. I export the diagram to an eps to print, and it’s perfect fidelity. I’m treating each model as a document, but when the time comes to layout the book, I can import them into a master document that encapsulates the whole book. Meanwhile, this fall I’m going to get a 3-ring binder (how anachronistic!) so I can make a physical prototype of the book, and pop in the models as they get diagrammed.

I had figured the book will take about two years, with the first year concentrating mainly on diagramming and the second on assembling the book and getting it published. Well if I can get 3 models done every 2 months, that’ll be 18 diagrams this year, which is more than halfway but still leaves a good way to go. I’m estimating somewhere between 20 and 30 models total, and I haven’t tackled any of the really complex ones yet. I have about a dozen models already diagrammed, although I’ve changed the designs for about half of them, and they’ll all need to be redone for styles. So hopefully as fall comes and turns to winter I’ll be able to pick up the pace a bit.

Here’s a screen grab of one of my pages. There’s a space at the top of each model for a picture and a blurb about the subject, folding process, or whatever info is appropriate.

Origami Convention 2008

Last week was the annual OUSA Convention. It was a great time and it was great to see all my origami friends. Most years I work intensely to come up with a new design, but this year I had so many new designs it wasn’t necessary. I did fold some of John Montroll’s unpublished polyhedra, and talked with him about some polyhedra ideas I have. But mostly I hung out. I met some Brits, and a Canadian / South African folder (Hi Quentin!), plus all the usual suspects. (Hi John, Brian, Marc, etc.) Although not strictly origami, T. J. Norville had a cool thing he did making geodesic balls out of paper plates.

Jeannie and the girls came this year. It was Michelle’s first time, and Lizzy’s first time going 2 days. The girls made crowns and flowers, and Jeannie folded tessellations and flexicubes. Both kids had their models in the Origami By Children exhibit. Back in the spring when the kids did their models, I had them fold a bunch and picked the best ones to submit. Michelle didn’t want to part with her Candy Cane at the time, but shortly forgot about it. When she saw it on display she suddenly remembered, and got upset until I explained to her the whole point of the exhibition was so people could see her model. She seemed to like that.

I taught my Adirondack Moose, which is a new model, not diagrammed and I hadn’t taught it before. I rated I intermediate because it had no closed sinks or other crazy moves, and is not as difficult as many of my other models, but in retrospect maybe I should have rated it complex. The students of complex classes self-select and are all expert folders. With intermediate classes it can be more of a mixed bag. In this case it seemed most everyone was up to it, but the class was very full and the desks were large and far apart, so most people couldn’t see as well as they would like. I spent most of the class walking up and down to make sure everyone got a good luck. In the end everyone came out with a successfully folded moose.

I put a lot of work into my exhibit. I came up with about ten new models this year and folded new versions of some of my existing designs out of better paper. Of course as I get better, everyone else does too, and lot people had interesting cool stuff. On Sunday Dan Robinson led a critique of a group of people’s displays, sort of a round-robin atelier, which I found quite productive. I got some complements from folders I really admire. Dan, who folded an awesome Egret and is into birdwatching, praised my Loon. Robert Lang, who had a whole chapter on elephant design in his book, liked my elephant for it’s massiveness and power. And Brian Chan, who does alot of sci-fi themed subjects, liked my Rocket, UFO and Balloon.

The Monday sessions were interesting, especially the afternoon ones. Dan had a discussion on the aesthetics of origami design. There was alot of discussion of paper. I haven’t used alot of this, but need to find better paper, larger thinner sheets. There are a handful of exotic papers people use for origami: Washi, Hanji, etc. The are very hard to find in larger than 25cm sheets. I’m also out of Wyndstone paper, which had been my main paper for extra-large models, but I can’t seem to find it online. I also ran into Marc Kirschenbaum in the morning; he was on his way to do a seminar on publishing. This lead me to realize that I now have over 30 original models, and seem to be generating them at an accelerating rate (I just came up with a Wizard this morning because I friend brought a Balrog action figure into the office.)

So I decided to start work on an origami book of my own. I have 10 or so models diagrammed and need to diagram a bunch more. I’m hoping to get the diagramming mainly done in a year and then turn my attention toward assembling the book and getting it published.

Coming soon: Pictures!

Origami Baluchitherium

Still catching up here. Last week, as previously mentioned, was the annual Origami USA Convention. Robert Lang led his annual design challenge, and this year’s subject was a prehistoric animal, non-dinosaur. I had considered this topic for a while, and settled on an Ice-Age mammal, a.k.a. Megafuana. I mean, how could you not like the name, Mega-fauna? It means giant animal!

I had made a start on a Megaceros (giant horns), a.k.a., the Irish Elk, an extinct deer which has the largest antlers of any member of the deer family, up to 3 meters across! I had used my Moose as a starting point, and changed the proportions to get even bigger antlers. But once I got to the point where it was time to sculpt the model it became clear this approach wasn’t going to work. It didn’t look distinctly deer-like enough, and working out the details of the antlers would require some time, and probably a deeper redesign going all the way back to the base. Else I’d just end up with a funny-looking moose.

So I put it aside for a while to give it some thought. And then suddenly it was Friday, and that evening I would be setting up my exhibit, so I if I was to participate in the challenge I’d have to come up with something fast!

Luckily I had another idea in mind: a Baluchitherium. This extinct giant may have been the largest mammal ever to walk on land! It was as tall as a giraffe and had the girth of an elephant, and although it was a member of the Rhinoceros family it had no horn on its head. So I combined the back half of my elephant with a long neck and a head with ears and snout similar to the moose. I folded one test out of a 10″ sheet of kami and then went straight on the display model, made of a 20″ square of Wyndstone. And it came out pretty well, if I say so myself.

The challenge display was full of diverse and exciting work, and I was happy to be a part of it. And as for the Irish Elk? It’s just as well I didn’t do that because Robert folded one that totally kicked ass!

Adirondack Origami

It’s been a really busy week. Last weekend was the annual Origami USA convention, which is always lots of fun but exhausting. Lots of exciting things this year, but I’ll talk about that more in a future post, once I get my pictures developed.

For now, though, another origami topic. You may remember back in May I was jamming on an origami commission and developed a bunch of new models. The project was for Adirondack Life magazine. The new issue, which just hit the stands yesterday features a 4-page spread of my work, including a moose, bear and a loon. There is also a companion feature online, which has diagrams for my canoe:

http://www.adirondacklife.com/index.php?option=com_content& task=view&id=155&Itemid=119

Thanks to Kelly for this opportunity. My first mainstream print publication for origami. Enjoy!

More Origami

I’ve been busy folding recently. I’m sort of on a roll after completing my recent commission. This week I folded some new models for the upcoming OUSA Convention this June. If you’re an origami person and you can get to New York City you should definitely come. It’s gotten to the point where I’m folding on the train now, where I’d normally be reading. I’m in the middle of Stranger in a Strange land, too, which is really good.

I bought some nice 10″ Japanese washi paper last week, and folded new versions of my Lizard and Turtle. They came out very nice. This paper is softer and more springy than kami, so used paper clips to clamp some of the folds overnight. For the turtle I came up with a new way to lock the shell together so you don’t need to use foil or wet fold it.

Both these models use my hex base and I came up with a third critter for this series: a Frog. I’m still in the refining stage, but it’s coming along. It’s an interesting variation on the hex base in that it transforms from a hexagon to a triangle before it becomes a frog. You can see a prototype here. I like the pose and curved shape. The difficulty now is in the sculpting, getting the back legs just so, and the curve of the back and the eyebrows.

When I’m done that I want to fold a 10″ version of my Armadillo out of washi, and maybe a fox if I can find the right paper. And beyond that, another hot air balloon, and some new ideas if time permits.

Robert Lang’s challenge this year is a prehistoric non-dinosaur animal. Last year it was a plant, which was a really cool topic, and I had a pretty cool concept for a potted plant, but didn’t have the time to develop it. This year I’ve decided to do some ice-age mammal, partly because I always enjoy that hall in the Museum of Natural History, and partly because I have models I can adapt to get there. I have three concepts: one is a Baluchitherium from a kite base, another is a prehistoric Pachyderm, such as a Mammoth or Shovel Tusker (Gomphotherium) based on my Elephant, and the third is a Megaceros, a.ka. Giant Irish Deer, based on my Moose. I was also considering a Glyptodon, based on my Armadillo, but I think the others are cooler (mainly for being more giant when they were living animals, not that a Glyptodon is small by any means). But the problem is: I can only choose one. So which shall it be?

Elephant: Evolution

Here is my new Elephant. Not only is it easier to fold, but is also about a third larger, and has a cleaner look with fewer creases and a better stance and body form. The one pictured here is folded from a 20″ square, but it works from regular 10″ kami, something that my old Elephant never did. The head is basically the same (although it uses proportionally more of the paper) except the ears are larger. The legs, feet shoulders and hips are detailed in a new way, again simpler but with a good effect. It’s strong too. This one here is folded from Wyndstone paper and can hold some weight if you press down. The key is to make sure all four legs are the same length so they contract the ground when the model is at rest. I think I’ll call this one Bull Elephant.

Next up: a War Elephant with a castle on his back!

Life and Origami

I’ve been really busy the last few weeks. More on that below, but first a few preliminaries.

First, both of the girls had their models accepted in OUSA’s origami for children exhibit! Look for them this June.

Next, it turns out that Nick.com won a Webby. Thanks for all your votes. I have no idea how canihazacheezeburger.com did.

Spring is really, really here.  The weather has been really, really beautiful.  Out in the garden we planted tomatoes a few weeks ago. Critters ate them.

I haven’t had a chance to work on music in a couple of weeks, although I want to get my last song of the current set done soon. Hopefully this weekend I will get back to it. One or two more sessions and I’ll be able to post a rough mix; it’s down to vocals and horns. A couple things came up that delayed the music work.

One is I got some malware on my PC. It looks like it’s under control now, but I’m afraid that next time I reboot it will come back. I had to go out and get anti-malware sofware and all, and it didn’t even fully clean it. I might have to go back and restore my OS from and archive I made last fall. Oh such fun. Glad at least my new computer’s a Mac.

The other is I’ve been really jamming on origami, making a ton of models. I’ve been working the last month or so on an origami commission, and I finished all the models last Friday. It was a cool set of subjects; each on presented different and interesting challenges. I’m please and satisfied that I was able to come up with good designs for all of them pretty much on demand in a short time, and while I was at it, came up with some new ideas I can apply in other models. These were more in the intermediate than complex level, so it was also good to take a step back towards more readily doable subjects. I’m particularly fond of the bear and the moose.

The Bear is in the modern style, which is to say it doesn’t really use a base. With a model like this it’s all about the pose and the posture. I came with the basic form and approach pretty quickly, but it took a couple of days just to work out the ears! And it changed around the design quite a bit.

When I was done I noticed an underlying structural similarity to my Elephant. So I went back to look at my Elephant, and it seemed needlessly complex to me, especially the back legs. I remember a few years ago when I came up with the design really struggling to work it out but never being fully satisfied with the fold sequence. So now I’m redesigning my Elephant. The new version is closer to 30 steps than 50, and the same size paper yields a substantially larger beast. The overall appearance is very similar, and the head is almost exactly the same. Of course one thing leads to another, so now I’m working on the head.

For the moose, I had a bit of an idea about how to approach the antlers. I saved this model for last, cuz it was the hardest and I figured I’d work up to it, but by the time I got there time was running out. So rather then do a free body design I fell back on the tried-and-true bird base. (A modified stretched bird base, actually.) I pretty much nailed the model on the first try with not alot of experimentation and some lucky guesses on the proportions. Using the base turned out the be a good thing because it left me with a thick body with lots of layers; it was strong and the legs could support the weight, and the model doesn’t tend to flop forward despite the big antlers.

I took the day off Thursday and pretty much folded continually from first thing in the morning into the evening and the wee hours of the night, all the final models in one long session. I was amazed at how exhausted I was by the end of the day. It was intensely creative, and my brain felt like it does at the end of a 16 hour marathon of writing code. My hands hurt right at the base of the joint of my thumb too.

Sunday was a folding session at the Museum of Natural History. I took Lizzy and my friend John was in town to teach and hang out. He’s working on a new book that includes a lot of theory, and I looked thru some of the material. Lots of math; very intense stuff. It’s going to be up there with Robert’s ODS. Lizzy learned how to wet-fold. It’s also kind of cool to see how she can function and enjoy herself in an all adults kind of setting. All in all a really good day.

Jeannie stayed home and re-planted the garden, and built a little fence out chickenwire to keep the critters out. Tomatoes again as well as various peppers. So far so good on the critter front.