Death of Rats

I started to write this up when I first made it awhile ago, then went to something else and didn’t finish. Maybe I thought it was too odd.

This is one of my more obscure choices of model. In Terry Pratchett’s Diskworld Series of books, Death is a major character in a few of the books. In one book, Reaper Man, there are sub-deaths for specific living creatures. One of these is the Death of Rats, a tiny rat skeleton in a black cloak. I mean, he’s a normal sized skeleton for a rat. I just didn’t want you to think he was some human sized rat skeleton. All of the sub-deaths end up absorbed by Death except for the Death of Rats, who pops up in other books.

So I have a skeletal rat in a black shroud with a sickle. He has fingers on his non-sickle hand, and toes on both feet. He has a thumb on the hand with fingers. I realize rats don’t have thumbs, but how else is he supposed to hold his sickle?

I also tried to make the black show up at the tip of his nose to imply a nose hole and void space in the skull.

Grey Rabbit

Origami, Original Designs

I came up with a model I call “Grey Rabbit”. As you can see, it doesn’t have to be grey, that’s just the name. It is a rabbit though.

I decided to try and make diagrams for this one. I think they’re understandable, but I wrote them. So I’m hoping someone will fold one and show me what they got or let me know about something that’s not clear. The diagram images are bigger than I usually put on here, but hopefully they’ll still upload alright.

diagrams read right to left

Archdemon, Belial, & Dessert Demon

Origami, Original Designs

Here’s another origami Dragon Quest monster. Nearly all of Dragon Quest’s monsters are designed by Akira Toriyama, the guy who did Dragonball. I thought now would be a good time for another DQ monster, Archdemon, with the E3 having DQXI on Switch and the Hero(es) from DQ games coming to smash.

This is one of the ones I painted after the folding. The images above are before the detail painting, and you can see there’s colour switch around the nose.

One of the paints I used was new and didn’t dry as quickly as the others. I painted the wings with it, thought I let it dry enough, then refolded the wings to make sure they didn’t lose the shape. I had to unfold to paint more, but the paint fused the wing and it ended up tearing. I grafted a new wing on him after this.

I did the pallet swap monsters Belial and Dessert Demon too. I also made them their weapons in smaller squares.

Rocket Raccoon and Groot

Origami, Original Designs

Since the new Avengers movie is coming out soon, I thought I’d post these ones. It’s Rocket Raccoon and Groot from Guardians of the Galaxy (and a number of other things)!

Both are dual colour models, where the square is one colour on one side and a different one on the other. I think Rocket’s ok, with a raccoon face and tail. He also has bandoliers, which I’ve never seen Rocket wear. But I wanted something distinctive to go with the gun-wielding raccoon. Also, making a square into a raccoon is tricky. I also made him a gun with four barrels (out of a separate square) to make him more recognizable.

A friend said he didn’t know it was Rocket because there was no Groot. At first, I was going to make a big Groot, but I couldn’t think of one. Eventually, I realized baby Groot would be easier to see in origami, and came up with this one.

This is my best version, but it’s too big for the Rocket I have. So, I scaled it down and simplified it.

But it was still a bit too big. I made the simplest version I could think of. I think it works pretty well.

Green Dragon

Origami, Original Designs

I’ve done a few Dragon Quest monsters in origami and always wanted to make the Green Dragon. It was tricky, but I came up with one I like. Apparently, the hero of Dragon Quest 3 might be added to Smash Brothers Ultimate, so I was initially intending to wait for that to post this. However, besides that that might not happen, my Green Dragon came out quite a bit different than the Dragon Quest one.

To explain, here is the Dragon Quest Green Dragon:

Unless you paint it after, you only get two colours in origami. I could have done the upper and lower half body difference, but the spine being a different colour seemed more striking to me. My dragon has shorter horns, no side fins, and bigger feet. Also, I used the spine spikes to add scale texture to the body.

I have a couple of late-stage development shots:

Here’s the first version of my impressionistic Green Dragon:

That’s the “first version” because I decided it should be longer for some reason. The second version is bigger, longer, and has finer scales and more spines.

I don’t know which version I like better. The original is a bit more cartoonish and a better fit for Dragon Quest. But the other one is large.

Zapdos

Origami, Original Designs

This is my version of the pokemon Zapdos, or just a general thunderbird, if you’re not into pokemon.

I designed the head first then the wings. After these, the things that changed the most were the legs and tail. Only the width of the tail really changed, because I wanted it to be like the tail in Calico’s Zapdos, shown here (I wish there was a crease pattern or something for that).

The yellow one has the earliest legs, where only the lower legs and front feet change colour. The shiny one has completely different coloured legs a slightly different tail. The matte one is the final version, with the legs sticking straight out from the main body.

I been trying to do fancy outdoor shots, but I wasn’t sure what to do here. So I made him in a fence thing.

Mothra

Origami, Original Designs

A few days ago, the first trailer for Godzilla: King of the Monsters came out. Yay! I love Godzilla, and this one looks pretty good. It also has Mothra, Radon, and King Ghidora (and maybe others). I’ve made a Godzilla and Ghidora, so I thought I’d post my origami Mothra.

This was an odd one due to the wings needing so much length. I made the abdomen from a point formed inside the square, and then spread it out and added ridges. That way, I could make sections for the head, wings, and legs using the edges of the paper.

I like how the face turned out, which is odd because it’s mostly shaping. The eyes in particular had to be indented to show up, but they turned out. The biggest problems were the antenna above the head (which turned out a bit short) and the appendages to the sides of her mouth. I tried to get those from the set with the legs, but they sometimes look more like forelegs.

I figured Mothra would look better painted, with all the vibrant colours. She’s pretty fuzzy, so I used oil paints because they sometimes look fuzzy to me (not that they really do here). I left the white unpainted. Her hindwings are above her forewings now because I painted them second and don’t know how long it takes oil paints to completely set.

I’m thinking of updating my Godzilla a bit so he’s not so thin and adding some to my Pteranodon to make a Radon. I wonder if I should try Gamera? Daiei should really let them put him in a movie with Godzilla.

Hollow Knight

Origami, Original Designs

I designed an origami model for the protagonist of the Team Cherry game Hollow Knight (which is available on Steam). I really love this game. It came out February 2017, right after the game award season and well before the Steam Summer Sale. While it certainly wasn’t forgotten because of this, I kind of feel like it was overshadowed by other games that came out later in the year.

This little dude is the protagonist, and he’s… a little dude. I’m not sure how much I should say to not give away the story. You’re just dropped into the game, but the story unravels as you go along.

Anyway, he lives in a world filled with zombie bugs that he kills with his weapon, a “nail”. It’s more serene and/or moody than that description implies.

Like I said, it’s a fantastic game. In August and October 2017, they released free content packs with new bosses, accessories, side quests, and some new locations, and have another pack in development. Even in their regular maintenance update, they added an adorable (but deadly) bee knight.

If you have Steam and don’t have the game, buy it here. It also came out recently on the Nintendo Switch.

King Ghidorah

Origami, Original Designs

I make a lot of kaijuu, and, since I made Godzilla before, I decided to try for Ghidorah. After getting a base I liked, I went through a few versions of this one.

The wings are shaped such they kind of arc up, making the shoulders out the longest part by a lot (but never curving back down). I got that aspect, but the problem became making the heads match. I figure the middle one can be a bit different, but, in the first one, they are way too far apart.

His tail is kind of fishy, but I really like how the feet turned out.

I tried a few different heads and added scales to the chest flap. The heads were changed by minor additions, but I finally decided I needed something more drastic to get more leeway in the side heads.

I did this by collapsing in more paper to those sections (perpendicular to the wings). This helped with the front scales, gave a more rectangular body, and added parts to the tail. The middle head has an extra pair of horns but is now much closer to the other two, with all three now having tongues.

Mindflayer and Kobold

Origami, Original Designs

Here are a couple more origami I designed.

Awhile ago, I was at a game shop that specialized in little miniature dudes for Warhammer 40k and the such. I didn’t want to get into another hobby, but I did pick up a little mindflayer guy to put on my desk. They’re like priests, with the long robes and magic, with squid or octopus heads. They’re also in a lot of video games. Eventually, I thought he might make good origami.

I think I could have defined the hands better, but I like them this way because they kind of look like tentacles. His head is more squid like, which is more like the ones in Final Fantasy games than most other interpretations.

He has 13 face tentacles. I thought that was a good number for any monster, but I noticed that they usually have less. Do you think 13 face tentacles are too many face tentacles?

Much more recently, I came up with a Kobold. I found out a friend of mine plays a Dungeons and Dragons game online, and I asked him what he thought would be a good monster in origami. When he said “a Kobold”, we were on completely different pages. I was thinking something wolf-like, but, because it’s an older, vaguely defined mythological creature, it has a lot of forms, some of which shape-shift.

The D&D version is more dragon-like, and mine is based on the 5^th edition version. I eventually designed the one above but accidentally ended up with an extra pair of limbs. I thought I could make the extra paper be belts and stuff, but it just looked bulky. It bugged me enough that I changed the design and added fingers. The tail ended up really long, but I think I like this version.

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