Papiroflexia

Papiroflexia (Spanish for "Origami") is the animated tale of Fred, a skillful paper folder who could shape the world with his hands.

Created by Joaquin Baldwin at the UCLA Animation Workshop, 2007. Original Score written by Nick Fevola.

Papiroflexia [Site]

The Japanese Tradition - Origami

Funny skit that shows what origami can do, from simple to complicated works of art. In it, is the paper folding student trying to outdo his old master scene. The video is in Japanese with no subtitles and split into two versions. One is the abridged version (above), which only has the funny skit and the other is the complete version.

The Japanese Tradition - Origami [complete video]

Paper vs. Paper

The Nightmare Before Christmas, Chicken Run, Corpse Bride, Wallace and Gromit, and Robot Chicken these are some of the popular movies and shows that used stop-motion process to animate their characters to life. Stop-motion is a film process whereby a single frame of an object is shot, the object is moved slightly, and then another frame is shot. When the frames run continuously it creates an illusion of fluidity in the motion of the object being filmed and they appear to move by themselves. Here's "Extra Strong", a stop-motion short film created by Giovanni Braggio, Lorenzo Latrofa, and Fabio Santomauro (Italians) featuring some paper on paper action.

Prison Break Origami Crane

So today is the Prison Break Season 2 Finale and fans all over the US are eagerly awaiting how this season is going to end - as with all season finales, this is going to be good and also leaves you a lot of questions to ponder upon for this summer while you wait for the next one. For those who don't know or don't watch this show, Prison Break is an American television series from the Fox Network and the story is about a man who was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit and his brother's elaborate plan to help him escape his death sentence. One of the prominent scenes in Prison Break is Michael Scofield's (Wentworth Miller) use of an origami crane/swan to hide cryptic messages and codes for his cohorts, and when paper is involved you know were going to feature it. Another thing is that this origami pattern is the "official" one that Fox released to the public, but when I displayed the crane in my office, my boss (who's addicted to it) told me that it didn't look like the one they used on the show, she said mine looked to simple. So I decided to review some of the tapes and what do you know, she was right - it's not the same. But nonetheless, here's the "Official" Prison Break Origami pattern from Fox.

Prison Break Origami Crane [Download]
Photos [Flickr]
Video thumbnails courtesy [Fox.com]

Origami Basics

The basic folds/creases underlying all origami projects are very simple. The two major creases and their symbols (sometimes the symbols differ, but the diagram should tell you if they aren’t using the “standard” notation) are:

1.)Valley Fold (fold the paper so there is a “valley” along the crease): -----------
2.)Mountain Fold (fold the paper so there is a “mountain” along the crease): _--.._--.._--.._—

You can do a great deal with just those two creases! In fact, Pureland Origami (developed by John Smith) only uses those two creases.

-->[3 Pureland style models to try out, and a flash video of how to fold a Pureland Dracula. Also, click the “Smith’s Models” link on John’s site (link above) to get even more diagrams (including non-pureland models). Yay!]<--

The next step from there is to familiarize yourself with common origami symbols/notation, and then get a few bases under your belt. Bases are the series of creases a model is “based” on. Many of these bases date back to the early days of origami, and are used in a huge variety of origami models. The standard bases are also a good place to start if you want to try your hand at making your own models.

A great website to visit if you’re just starting out in origami (and even if you’ve been doing it for awhile) is Oriland. They have some great free diagrams available, as well as a section called ”Oriversity”, where you can access simple diagrams for practice, learn the important origami bases, brush up on your knowledge of origami symbols, and even get some helpful hints. So get folding!

(I guess what I said earlier about “less words next time” was a lie. This is a blog after all, right? :p )

Here are some photos of models I just folded (fresh for you!) from diagrams on the Oriland website:

1.) Box; 2.) Fruit(eggplant...?); 3.)Fern; 4.) Fern and Fruit; 5.) Everyone fits in the box -convenient!

P.S. Is anyone interested in seeing more Kirigami on here? It’s been an age since I’ve done any, but if there’s interest, I’ll try to chuck in some posts about that too. :)

Typical Intro Stuff

Hey everyone – my name is Jane, and I hail from the lovely state of Oregon. Ron has invited me to join the Paperkraft blog so I can share some of my paper skills with you reader types. :) Sorry for the late introduction – it figures that I’d be called out of town for work as soon as I agreed to contribute to a blog!

I’ve been doing origami since I was in pre-school, and over the years I’ve managed to become pretty good at it. Until recently it’s the only kind of “papercrafting” I was really involved in. A few years ago while trolling through the internet for more origami diagrams, I came across the Canon Papercraft page. The papercraft projects they had looked cool, but I didn’t have my own printer (or any access to a color printer, being a poor student). A few months ago I came across the Canon site again, along with the Readymech website. Finding myself in the possession of a color printer (not to mention having some cardstock lying around the house), I quickly pasted up a veritable army of Readymechs. At that point I felt ready to try something more serious, and wound up making a box and a pop-up card from the Canon website. This papercraft stuff is addicting!

Around the time Ron posted his request for another writer on the paperkraft blog, I was knee deep in constructing the Jaguar E-Type model, and decided that I’d submit an e-mail to Ron, freshly bitten by the papercraft bug as I was. So here I am – hopefully now I can get the Jaguar finished off without any more interruptions...

Now that your eyes are burning from too many words (I promise less next time), here are some soothing pictures of some of my Origami projects (better ones to come), as well as a photo of one the Readymechs I made. I’ll post the Jaguar as soon as it's done!

1.) Batboxes; 2.) Star of Peace; 3.)Unit Origami Ball; 4.)Kusudama Ball; 5.)Tentaclops Readymech

Thanks again to Ron for having me on the blog – feel free to drop me a comment if you have any questions! :)

Pornogami

Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding has long been a family oriented past time, from the young ones all the way to the young once. But recently, a new style has branched out geared primarily for the adult practitioners of origami. Marc Kirschenbaum, 37 yr. old native New Yorker and Master Origamist has started doing Pornogami, yes that's right, Pornographic Origami. Although sexual material in the 3D paper model world has been around for a while, it's not that very common in origami because origami purists would like to keep it G-rated. Marc has done pornogami for Playboy (vagina) and Maxim (copulating bunnies) out of dollar bills, and is a board member of OrigamiUSA.

Fold Me Now [Village Voice]
Pornogami Gallery [Village Voice]
Marc Kirschenbaum [Web Site]