Month: December 2015

Montroll’s Dragons and Other Creatures

Miscellaneous, Origami

I haven’t posted in a while mainly because I was traveling, but I actually got two origami books there when I was free. The first is Works of Satoshi Kamiya 2, which means I’ll have that to do after the first one. The second one is Dragons and Other Fantastic Creatures in Origami by John Montroll. I did the models in that book in the car ride back home.

MONTROLL - DRAGONS AND ~ BOOK - (102)

John Montroll is one of my favorite artists. He has hundreds of great designs in dozens of books. His animal origami book was one of my first ones, and some of his books I have (that are great) collect models of African animals, North American animals, prehistoric animals, and mythical creatures and the Chinese zodiac. His books tend to be organized by section (with each section sorted by increasing difficulty), and this one has sections of weapons, dragons, humanoids, and creatures.

MONTROLL - DRAGONS AND ~ BOOK - (103) MONTROLL - DRAGONS AND ~ BOOK - (107)

The weapon and humanoid sections only have four models each, and the weapons are much more simple, warm-up models. The two-headed martian on the right has a face on each head (it’s a little hard to see in my pictures, sorry).

MONTROLL - DRAGONS AND ~ BOOK - (104) MONTROLL - DRAGONS AND ~ BOOK - (110)

MONTROLL - DRAGONS AND ~ BOOK - (105) MONTROLL - DRAGONS AND ~ BOOK - (106)

There are 10 different dragons, though some have similar bases. He has 1 to 3 headed dragons, then winged dragons, then eastern and western dragons, and then winged dragons with multiple heads.

MONTROLL - DRAGONS AND ~ BOOK - (108) MONTROLL - DRAGONS AND ~ BOOK - (109)

The creatures section includes a griffin, a unicorn (which I went a little cubic on), a wyvern, a phoenix, and various animals with wings attached. The last model is one of the best; it’s a unicorn with wings (or a pegasus with a horn).

Crease Pattern Challenge 009

Crease Pattern Challenge, Origami

Sometimes, designers choose to fold two related things with one square of paper. For instance, a previous Crease Pattern Challenge was a dude on a horse made out of the same square. Brian Chan made a Kraken (squid type) eating a boat, all with the same sheet. Similarly, Challenge #9 , by Go Kinoshita, is a sperm whale fighting a giant squid, which he titles, “A Sperm Whale vs. A Giant Squid”.

OTMCP_009 - SPERM WHALE VS GIANT SQUID - KINOSHITA (1)OTMCP_009 - SPERM WHALE VS GIANT SQUID - KINOSHITA (4)

First off, I had apparently made one of these and lost it after only taking one picture. That’s the purple and blue one. I wasn’t going to put that one’s picture here, but I think it’s interesting how much differently they came out. I traced the crease pattern on that one, so it should be more accurate. The tentacles and whale’s fins are more like the original, but the whale’s missing some face.

OTMCP_009 - SPERM WHALE VS GIANT SQUID - KINOSHITA (3)OTMCP_009 - SPERM WHALE VS GIANT SQUID - KINOSHITA (5)

OTMCP_009 - SPERM WHALE VS GIANT SQUID - KINOSHITA (6)

Upside down. Also, hey! I can do captions!

The second version has the appropriate amount of whale face and the whale’s open maw that you really can’t see very well. However, it’s missing one set of tentacles and the fins are slightly different. You can also tell that I had a lot of trouble on the whale, so he looks pretty banged up. It looks more like “head on collision” than “vs.” to me.

One of Kinoshita’s other cool designs is a western style Dragon that’s diagrammed in Origami Tanteidan Convention Book 19. As usual, I didn’t use paper big enough to do it justice. He’s a pretty nice dragon, with different coloured wings and feet claws and lots of articulated features. The wings kept angling upward for mine.

CHAN - ATTACK OF THE KRAKEN (101).jpg

Also, since it was mentioned earlier, I did fold Brian Chan’s Attack of the Kraken awhile ago, from the crease pattern on his website. I used bigger paper to make sure I wouldn’t mess up too badly, but that actually made the prow too limp. Then I went off the rails a bit.

CHAN - ATTACK OF THE KRAKEN (102)CHAN - ATTACK OF THE KRAKEN (107)

CHAN - ATTACK OF THE KRAKEN (103)CHAN - ATTACK OF THE KRAKEN (104)

CHAN - ATTACK OF THE KRAKEN (105)CHAN - ATTACK OF THE KRAKEN (106)

Instead of making it a straight up spiky prow, I made it into a figurehead of the Chimera from Greek mythology, with the goat, snake, and lion heads. I don’t know why. Putting an omen of natural disasters, including specifically shipwrecks, on the prow of a ship is probably a bad idea. This ship was just asking for kraken attacks.CHAN - ATTACK OF THE KRAKEN (110).jpg