Hello everyone! It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything meaningful. I haven’t been all that active as far as origami is concerned. I do hope to change that and I’ll start off by revealing a new original design!

Model: Porcelain Crab (Petrolisthes eriomerus)
Designer: Geoff Mayhew
Paper: 25cm x 25cm Japanese Foil + Tissue (I think)

Time for a fun fact: All crabs have five pairs of legs! All have a pair of chelipeds, legs with pincers. True crabs, or brachyurans, such as dungeness crabs, use the remaining four pairs of legs as walking legs. Anomurans use either three pairs (your king crabs and porcelain crabs) or two pairs (your hermit crabs) for walking. The remaining 1 or 2 pairs of legs are greatly reduced and may serve no purpose (although hermit crabs use their diminutive legs for holding on to their borrowed shells!)

I developed the prototype for my crab while on a flight from Seattle to Honolulu back in 2013. I was originally trying to make a true crab. However, after realizing I didn’t leave enough paper for five pairs of legs, I figured I would just keep going and make a crab with four pairs of walking legs.

After getting the basic layout down, my design had lots of paper budgeted for claws. I naturally thought of the porcelain crabs I frequently found while tidepooling in Bellingham. They are extremely docile and use their oversized pincers as giant shields and for wedging themselves under rocks.

After the first few drafts, I realized that the carapace was proportionately too large. I slimmed down the sides and folded the front in to make simple mouthparts.

Another feature I wanted to include was the crab’s tail. Although you typically don’t see the undersides of origami crab designs, I was going for anatomical accuracy. It extends from the carapace and nicely wraps around the underside of the body with pleats representing segmentation.

I can’t consider myself an invertebrate zoologist and exclude such details, right? But what about the fifth pair of legs!? In the case of porcelain crabs, these tiny legs sit tucked back along the sides of the carapace. I ultimately opted to not include them as they would probably just be distracting. There are also not any antennae as they are supposed to be inconspicuous. Including such ridiculously skinny and long appendages would be difficult and again, distracting.

Overall I’m pretty content with the proportions and simplicity of this design. I do have a CP and about 75% of the diagrams drawn, but for some reason I’m compelled to keep them secret, at least for now…

Several weeks ago I was contacted by Klipsun magazine and I had a brief phone interview about my experience working with stop-motion animation with Subversions media. You can view the article here.

In the recent weeks I managed to find some paper I wanted to try out for my Galapagos tortoise design that’s mostly completed but not quite ‘finished’. I nearly completed the equilateral triangle precreasing (where the diagonals are split in 72nds… ugh), but it seems I’ll have to delay this project another three months.

Because my job search was not as successful as I supposed it would be, I’m going off to Bering Sea all over again for another deployment. I got a last-minute offer I felt obligated to take and had only twelve days to get my ducks in a row and come to terms with leaving Bellingham prematurely. I’m in Seattle now, going through a quick briefing and will hopefully start my contract in Alaska soon.

This whole thing is something I’m not too thrilled about, considering how hard it is for me to leave my girlfriend, friends, and family a second time. I’ve got to pay my bills somehow. I guess there is some solace, however, as I barely had enough time to acquire my Open Water Diver and Dry Suit training before departing, and I will very likely be back in Washington in time to be a groomsman in a close friend’s wedding and see my girlfriend walk at her graduation from WWU.

This all being said, I’ll be back soon enough and am determined to showcase a completed design!

So the video I mentioned previously is finished! Take a look below!

Zappos Origami Spot from Subversionz Media on Vimeo.

It doesn’t seem that it will air on television, as it unfortunately didn’t place for Zappos’s “Celebrating the Art of Gifting” contest. The theme was, “Create a 30-second video that celebrates the art of gifting during the holiday season” (and after seeing the top eight, I’m a little surprised it didn’t place…). But regardless, I’m happy with the way it turned out, and it was definitely a fun experience working with Subversionz Media. See their posting here.

Hey everybody! For once I’m not posting just because I feel obligated to. I actually have something to show!

(If you were wondering if I designed anything during my time in Alaska, well, I didn’t :/. Go figure.)

Not long after I returned home to Bellingham I got a comment on this blog from Subversionz Media, a production company based in Seattle. They needed an origami artist to fold a few things for a stop-animation Zappos.com advert (for the internets and possible television!), so I took the offer (after a bit of persuasion from the girlfriend). I designed a few clothing items over a few days and went to the shoot, which was a lot of fun!

The final product is still in the works, but here’s a sneak peek at my designs!

Dress Origami Stop Motion from Subversionz Media on Vimeo.

Origami Jacket Stop Motion from Subversionz Media on Vimeo.

Origami Shoe Stop Motion from Subversionz Media on Vimeo.

And don’t forget to check out THIS LINK to see some more behind-the-scenes shots and some of the other great things Subversionz Media is doing! I’ll post again once the final advert is released!

Well, I completed my North Pacific Groundfish Observer training today in Anchorage, then pretty much got called to depart for Dutch Harbor tomorrow morning. No phone, probably very little if any internet, and just being on the ocean means you probably won’t hear from me, if at all, for around three months (but maybe I’ll get lucky and can get internet somewhere). Wish me luck, and enjoy your summers for me!

P.S. Almost at 30,000 views. I hope to see that it’s ticked over that amount by the time I check this blog again. If that’s not the case, I can’t blame anyone but myself for not updating with more interesting things. You may have more of a reason to visit this blog when I update it in November.

Hey folks. Once again, apologies for my infrequent updates. Not much origami-ing has been going on. But I thought I should make a new post, as it will be my last for a few months. Here’s a quick summary of what’s been going on:

I graduated in the spring with a B.S. in Biology – Marine Emphasis, cum laude, with a minor in Japanese and Environmental Science. A few days after I got a job with Alaskan Observers, Inc., under which I will be trained and deployed on Alaskan fishing vessels as a North Pacific Groundfish Observer. Essentially, I’ll be doing biological sampling for management and conservation purposes. Training is three weeks, deployment will be around four months, and debriefing may last a week or two. I hope to be back at my new apartment in Bellingham around the end of October or the beginning of November.

Hopefully, in the off-time of my grueling work schedule, I will be able to work a bit on origami. But my number one priority will be contacting my wonderful girlfriend, family and friends, as I am expecting to be, for the most part, mentally and socially isolated.

This is definitely going to be an adventure, and will be a good test of my independence and will power. I’ll post an update when I return, and will hopefully have a few origami doodles to show for it.

Thanks for visiting, see you again in a few months!

First off, sorry if you were expecting something about my Galapagos tortoise design. I have yet to make myself the properly presentable paper. It’s still a WIP.

Secondly, I hope you all had a happy new year. Mine was terrific, spent with my best friends. Let’s hope this year is productive and my blog sees more than a handful of new posts.

Lastly (keeping this power-writing thing goin’), I haven’t worked on much recently, other than some refolds of my older works. There was a sheet of white MC’ed double tissue laying on my floor for a few weeks and I finally decided to cut it into four 15x15cm (I think?) squares for folding. I dedicated the products (in the following photo) to perhaps my biggest fan of this blog, my three-year long crush and at long last girlfriend.

Hey guys and gals. Dead week starts in two days and finals a week after that. So of course I decide to start working on my origami again. I’ve actually spent the majority of my thanksgiving break in a chair working on stuff so here’s what’s been happening:

In the interest of finishing my Galapagos giant tortoise design (didn’t I start this almost a year ago?) I decided to experiment a bit with methylcellulose and tissue paper. After multiple failed attempts (I got impatient and tried too hard to push air pockets out while it was too wet rather than drying more with the blow dryer, which resulted in ripping and subsequent cursing) I got the confidence to try to make a sheet of brown paper. I had red and green tissue paper, hoping they’d bleed and make brown. I turned out to be an idiot because they didn’t bleed at all but I ended up with a good sheet of dark red and dark green on opposite sides. Naturally, I made a rose out of it. This was my first time making anything out of MC’d tissue paper and I think it came out better than my tissue foil one. The red and green together made both assume a darker hue and it held its shape 90% as well as the tissue foil, but without wrinkles!

Model: One-Sheet Rose (2005)
Designer: Brian Chan (http://chosetec.darkclan.net/origami/)
Folded from diagram, Tanteidan Convention 12
50cm red/green tissue paper w/ methylcellulose

Folding the rose yesterday set my back in a day in terms of progress on my tortoise so I got crackin’ last night and today, and about 10 something hours later I’ve nearly come up with the finished design (though not it’s presentable form). Here’s a sneak peek of what’s taken me months and months (on and off, that is):

Excuse any typos. I just got back from Boundary Bay after having their winter ale, the Cabin Fever. New all-time fave.

Well, it’s official. I kind of feel bad for receiving so many views (without frequently updating the content of the site). But not really.

I’ve been working on the project (a Galapagos giant tortoise, more specifically, Lonesome George) that I must’ve started half a year ago, and I’m getting close to where I can make a final, presentable product. I’m currently in the process of cleaning up the design and finding the right paper for it.

But now that school is starting up again in three days, this whole project might get put off for indefinite amount of time. Again.

My goal is to at least have it done by the end of fall quarter, because in winter, I plan on taking a papermaking class at the university, just for fun. It’d be awesome if I could make a nice sheet of paper for this project.

Anyway, thanks again for viewing. And to those of you downloading my CPs or diagrams, post a link to a picture of the final product!

So my fifth year of working at my best friend’s mother’s art camp has concluded and was a great success. I wanted to switch up the origami unit I teach, from unit origami to something that can provide even a newbie to origami a little room for creativity. I’ve always loved tessellations, so I designed a fairly simple one (most likely not original, kind of a modification of the one you’ll see on Sipho Mabona’s fugu or Kade’s magic ball). I wanted the kids to be able to color their lamp how they want and to shape it how they please, as well.

I had to find a very large sheet of paper so that after the pattern was folded it could wrap around a lightbulb with plenty of clearance and I also wanted the paper to be capable of supporting wet media for water coloring. The kids as a group didn’t have much of a problem folding the pattern but some still had trouble collapsing it, even with one-on-one help. But in the end they figured it out and I used wire to rig up clamps so they sit on a lightbulb. The project turned out a lot better than I expected, and the water color was a fantastic touch. Below is a picture of a few of the lamps that were on display during the exhibit for the kids’ parents.

Other than doing art, I had a fantastic time with my friend’s family and friends. The summer has been great so far, especially due to my six week marine biology course in La Paz, Mexico, and this last week at the art camp definitely has been keeping the high going.

Anyway, I’ll hopefully be getting back to finishing my old project I mentioned a while ago. Hopefully.