Godzilla/ゴジラ

There are some things I can talk on and on about to people’s annoyance. One of these is Godzilla and Godzilla movies. I like to start these entries with some random stuff about the model subject, but I’m going to try to keep this limited.

If you don’t know who Godzilla is, he has his own wiki here for him and his friends. The most recent projects are Shin Gojira (which is spectacular) and Legendary Pictures’ Godzilla-Kong film universe series thing. They seem to be on track to essentially remake King Kong vs. Godzilla, the third entry in the original Godzilla film series from 1963. I was always bothered by Godzilla being so much bigger than Kong, except when they meet. I guess it was a different Kong than the one in the 1933 King Kong movie, who died, but still. Anyway, Legendary has already thought of this, making their King Kong, from Skull: Kong Island, almost laughably gigantic.

I hadn’t seen too many Godzilla origami models (see last paragraph) and found a good base just messing around. I couldn’t figure out exactly where to put the spines, so this was the initial model.

Next I shifted the plates around a bit for this Godzilla.

Then I made a couple more Godzillas with some slight changes to bulk him out and make a more rounded head. The second has the seams spread out to make glowing orange skin sections on the body like in Godzilla vs. Destoroyah. I’m pretty happy with how he turned out.

Really though, I actually hadn’t looked for Godzilla in origami for a long time. There are now a couple of really good ones out there, such as Kade Chan’s and a model based on Shin Gojira found here by Zenigami Danshaku. I mean, I think that’s the original place for the Shin Gojira, but I don’t understand the Twitter.

Gothmog

Origami, Original Designs

I thought this would be a nice one for Halloween. While I was making orks, I thought it would be fun to try and make Gothmog. Here he is.

Gothmog is the king of the Balrogs in the Silmarillion (from the Lord of the Rings universe). There’s another Gothmog in the Return of the King who’s an ork or something. So not that guy. Gothmog (more or less) killed Fëanor, the elf dude who made the Silmarils. He’s my favourite character in the whole that stuff (although I did kind of only skim the Silmarillion).

Balrogs aren’t exactly well described in any of the books. They’re probably man-sized, unless they just look that way from a distance, and may have wings, as long as they don’t just cause shadows that look like wings. They all have fire whips and may have swords, except Gothmog, who has a big black axe.

He got a little complicated, so I made the whip and axe out of different squares of paper. He has some pretty large wings, hands with fingers, and a little tail (mainly because I had some extra paper there). The main feature is the head. He has two large teeth/tusks on the bottom of his mouth, four on the upper part, and a large tongue. He also has a mane of fire and 12 horns (6 on each side). I think he ended up pretty good.

Puchi Mage

Origami, Original Designs

This is the fourth and last of the Dragon Quest leaf bros. He’s the mage/black magician.

His yellow versions are プチマージ (Puchi Mage), FooMage, and Conkjurer, while his blue variations are コロマージ (Koro Mage), PodMage, and Wiz Pip.

I think this one came out the best of the designs. He has colour change on his hat, cape, and wand, has a leaf collar, and has fingers and a wand. The collar and cape should be the same colour (they are probably the same leaf in the original concept), but I couldn’t figure out how to do that. I’m really proud of the wand with the little star.

Scorpion

Origami, Original Designs

I wanted to do the next Crease Pattern Challenge next, but, after I finished it awhile ago, I only took a couple of pictures that are a bit blurry. Sometime between then and now, I lost the model. So I’ll have to whip it up again. Instead, I’ve got something I came up with.

This Scorpion is another one of those models that just kind of clicked. I had been working with this base pattern a lot, and I just thought, “Hey, scorpion”. It is an extremely simple model but still looks really good (I think). Again, I figure others have come up with a similar scorpion due to its simplicity. Hopefully, this does not lead to some kind of vendetta, like in Kill Bill, Titus Andronicus, or Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

I was also going to use this scorpion for the logo. I have it in a wooden cage in the picture below and changed it to grainy black and white (shown below). I liked it because it wasn’t immediately clear what it was, but I ended up going with the exact opposite in a stark cartoon scorpion outline thing.

UPDATE YO:

When I first made this scorpion, I thought it looked a bit similar to a scorpion I’d seen before, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I was organizing stuff and noticed a previous post here with random models. It was this scorpion by Robert Lang from The Complete Book of Origami. Yes, I had folded and put it in a previous entry and still couldn’t find it. I actually searched for “Robert Lang origami scorpion”, but he has gone on to bigger and better scorpions.

So, I folded them both at the same scale to compare. I don’t think they’re too similar. The similar feature is the tail, which radiates out from the dead center of the square in both models for length. The arms, legs, and head are completely different. However, the tail is such a prominent feature they do look similar.

The biggest difference between them is that I didn’t realize there is a difference between legs and arms in arachnids. Specifically, it’s not “eight limbs”, so a scorpion has both eight legs and two arms. You’ll notice, Lang’s scorpion is a scorpion, in that it has eight legs and two arms with pinchers. Not only does mine have only six legs, the arms don’t have pinchers. I know I google imaged “scorpion” while making this, so I’m really not sure what happened. Since the arms were a little long, I decided to pull some legs out of them.

I have the initial attempt above on the right, lined up with my original on left and Lang’s in the middle. Below is the updated scorpion.

Puchi Fighter

Origami, Original Designs

Another Puchi Dragon Quest monster is the Puchi Fighter. He is the warrior class leaf dude.

WKO_006 - PUCHI FIGHTER(101) WKO_006 - PUCHI FIGHTER(102) WKO_006 - PUCHI FIGHTER(103)

His yellow versions are the プチファイター (Puchi Fighter), FoFightr, and Conkerer in the DS version of Dragon Quest V. The blue/grey ones are コロファイター (Koro Fighter), PodFightr, and Battle Pip. I really don’t get why they decided to rename the Koro Hero to Pip Fighter and the Koro Fighter to Battle Pip. I guess it doesn’t make much difference when the yellow/green ones are all Conk-puns, but I still don’t get the name shell game. Is “Battle Pip” a thing? Like an expression or brand of cola?

WKO_006 - PUCHI FIGHTER(105) WKO_006 - PUCHI FIGHTER(106)

I actually made this one last (after the Puchi Mage). I couldn’t get the hat colour changed, but I’d really need 3 colours to do it justice anyway. I do like how the hat and colour change turned out. Also, an axe is extremely hard to make out of paper.

WKO_006 - PUCHI FIGHTER(107)

Puchi Priest

Origami, Original Designs

The second Puchi leaf dude I made was the Puchi Priest. The priest is the cleric/healer of the group (both with this monster and with character classes in Dragon Quest games). This is why he has a cross (and possibly a pope-ish hat).

WKO_004 - PUCHI PRIEST(102) WKO_004 - PUCHI PRIEST(103)

The green variations are プチプリースト(Puchi Priest), FooPriest, or Conkuisitor, while the blue editions are コロプリースト(Koro Priest), PodPriest, or Epipany (names from the Japanese, English SNES, and English DS editions of the games).

WKO_004 - PUCHI PRIEST(105) WKO_004 - PUCHI PRIEST(108)

I mentioned I was going to go over the names a bit, but I’m actually not so sure about the English names. I have no idea about Foo, Conk, or Pip, which recur in the English names. I think Pod refers to “pod people”, which are plants that replace humans in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Not sure tho.

Anyway, the Japanese names are プチ (Puchi) and コロ (Koro). Puchi is just a word for small/petit. Koro is more interesting; it’s from コロポックル (koropokkuru), which are little spirit people who live under plants in Ainu legend. I like little spirit people over alien abductors by far.

WKO_004 - PUCHI PRIEST(110)

Puchi Hero

Origami, Original Designs

As I said, I like Dragon Quest monsters and sometimes try to make them in origami. Some of my favourite monsters are a set of leaf people introduced in Dragon Quest 7. When they remade Dragon Quest 4, 5, and 6, I got a nice surprise, as they were added to DQ5 and its monster recruitment mechanic. You could have an entire team of just leaf people!

There are 4 different monsters, with far too many names. This is because of two reasons. First, there are two pallet swaps: puchi are green and yellow and koro are blue and grey/blue. That makes 8. Since their names were puns, the names were changed when translated to English (16). Then the names were re-translated for the DQ5 remake (24). Additionally, the Puchi Hero was used for a boss (no pallet swap, but different name) in DQ7, for another 2 names. They’re also bringing DQ7’s and DQ8’s 3DS remakes to English, and, if the boss’s name is re-translated, that will probably cause it to end up having 27 total names for 8 different monsters.

The first leaf dude I made was the プチヒーロー(Puchi Hero)/FooHero/Conkuistador. The DQ7 boss was さんぞくのカシラ (Sanzoku no Kashira: Bandit’s Leader)/BanditWig. Here he is.

WKO_003 - PUCHI HERO (101) WKO_003 - PUCHI HERO (102) WKO_003 - PUCHI HERO (105)

I tried to include as many prominent features as possible. He even has tiny fingers holding the sword and shield.

WKO_003 - PUCHI HERO (109) WKO_003 - PUCHI HERO (110) WKO_003 - PUCHI HERO (111)

The blue pallet swap is the コロヒーロー(Koro Hero)/PodHero/Pip Fighter. I don’t know what they were thinking in the DQ5 translation here, because one of the other ones is “Fighter” in Japanese (and not as a Japanese word: phonetic English ファイター Fa-i-ta-a).

WKO_003 - PUCHI HERO (113) WKO_003 - PUCHI HERO (115)

Naturally, this one reminds me of the Journey song of the same name, “Puchi Hero”. I was going to talk more about the names, but this is long enough. So maybe next Puchi.

WKO_003 - PUCHI HERO (114)

Lamia and Owl

Origami, Original Designs

Here are a pair of models I devised (I’m quickly running out of synonyms). The first I planned out and re-fashioned by trial and error, and the second I thought of near the end of playing around with extra paper.

WKO_012 - DEIS (1) WKO_012 - DEIS (5)

I came up with this Lamia trying to make Deis from the Breath of Fire video game series. (By “Lamia”, I just mean generic snake woman, as it’s sort of come to mean in pop culture, not the original mythological character.) If you played a Breath of Fire and are going, “Who?”, she was re-named Bleu in the English versions of the first two games. The series has great characters and character design. Deis is one of my favourite characters, which is lucky, since she’s in so many games.

WKO_012 - DEIS (4) WKO_012 - DEIS (2) WKO_012 - DEIS (6)

This is actually my second design for the character. The first had scales on the lower body, but adding scales causes the model to become shorter (head to tail). That model would actually make a good mermaid. I might post it if I ever go back and fix up the end of the tail. For this version, I was trying for something else (I forget what) when I found a base with the right length and started there.

WKO_013 - OWL (2) WKO_013 - OWL (3)

This Owl started as nothing in particular, became a suspension bridge, and finally became an owl when I backed up and looked at it. It’s kind of short but has lots of room for adjustment on the wings. To me, the Suspension Owl looks like something from a video game, so I like that.

WKO_013 - OWL (5) WKO_013 - OWL (8)

Phoenix and Something

Origami, Original Designs

My last entry this week is a couple of things I came up with. The first is a Phoenix… sort of. I once made it a long time ago with fancy printed paper and it looked really proud and phoenix-like. It’s more like a crane though. Which makes sense, as it was based on the classic crane origami model.

Related to that, I designed this model, but it’s based off of the traditional crane model and really pretty simple. So, there’s a good chance that someone else has designed a model that’s exactly the same by coincidence. It’s not like it’s an extremely complex model that I simplified slightly and claimed I did it, like if I stole Satoshi Kamiya’s Ancient Dragon. That would be obvious.

The last one I did is a Something. I don’t know what it is. I was trying to figure out back ridge scale things but couldn’t get it without a lot of lines on the rest of the model. So I used a pattern like the one on the skin of the Ryuzin to just make a texture out of it. This was just a test model (it would need much finer scales and bigger paper for what I had in mind), but I kind of liked it so I thought I’d put it up here.

I like how the weird head turned out, and am wondering if those flaps should be ears or ram-like horns. I probably won’t make it again though, as he’s just something I was playing around with. Still, I think he’s endearing.

Old One Pixie and Marquis de Léon/キングレオ

Origami, Original Designs

These are some pretty recent ones. I was trying to come up a Marquis de Léon (more on him below) and came up with a quirky monster that I like. It’s not actually from a square, though. I thought I could get a clearer handle on what I was trying to do by removing excess paper. It actually removed way too much, but I kind of doodled with what I had and got this.

I think it looks like a Cthulhu style old one monster with the tentacles combined with one of those angels from that show due to all the eyes. Or maybe a video game monster, like a Starman. Anyway, for some reason, I really like it.

The one I was trying to make was Marquis de Léon/キングレオ from Dragon Quest. All the Dragon Quest monsters are fun and inventive (they’re all designed by Dragonball creator Akira Toriyama; he seems to make an entirely new set of monsters for each game). The King Leo monster is a lion with eight arms. I guess, technically, he was a dude who turned into a lion with eight arms, but I only made the origami for the lion.

I think he came out ok. The final design has paws with three claws on the upper four legs, a wide, open mouth, and a very ostentatious mane. He also has a good nose. The muzzle gave me some trouble because it kept moving too close to the dog zone. It’s probably still a little too long on this one.

The pixel lion is a little hard to see. I have the original art in the Dragon Quest Encyclopedia of Monsters, which has all the monsters’ art from Dragon Quest 1 through 9. I love that freaking book. If you want it, here are a couple of links that have it available (at the time of writing this).

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