Solid Li'l Dragon

Yes, by popular* demand, Boston Origami is back! You remember our friend, the Happy Li'l Dragon. This creature is two-toned, not by design, but by accident. Traditionally, origami paper is colored only on one side, and models only use this side of the paper. (I don't know why.) Some models very cleverly use the white side of the paper to make a two-toned effect. Some, like this one, are two-toned because that's the only way the designer could get it to work.

Last week, I put my mind to a puzzle. Is it at all possible to make the Happy Li'l Dragon solid-toned?


Yes, apparently. This Solid Li'l Dragon contains quite a few more folds than his predecessor, but follows essentially the same pattern. Those folds consume more of the paper, however -- he is about 20% shorter than the two-toned dragon above. Unfortunately, much of that extra paper ends up in the head, making it very thick and difficult to fold.


* You know who you are.

Happy Li'l Dragon

Rowr!

This clever fellow swooping in from the sky is Lassie (short for "Velassieraptor"), one of a collection of hideous beasts given a good home by my friend Marci. The design is my own, developed one afternoon when I tried to see how much of the KNL dragon I could fold from memory. (Answer: not that much.)

As with my shrimp design, the happy li'l dragon has not been published anywhere, although I plan to do so at some point. The head is a traditional fish base grafted onto the body of a traditional crane. Lassie was folded from a 7" square of dark green/light green duo paper. He (she?) measures 5" from snout to tail and has a 3 1/4" wingspan.

Shrimp mk. 3

This shrimp ("Shrimp mark 3"... you don't want to see marks 1 and 2) was my first original design. I'm very pleased with it, although there are some improvements I eventually would like to make, particularly around the head and antennae. It is unusual in that the folder starts with a triangle (a 45-45-90 triangle, specifically) rather than a square, folded into half of a bird base. (Conceptually, picture folding a square of paper into a bird base, unfolding it, cutting the square down one diagonal, and refolding one of the resulting triangles along the existing creases.) The crease pattern and folding sequence are currently unpublished, although I do plan to publish both eventually.

I am particularly pleased with how well the tail came out. (You can see a close-up below.) As I was designing this model, one of my roommates brought out a bucket of shrimp tails ("don't ask," he said) so I could get a good idea of what they actually look like.

This shrimp was folded from one half of a 9 3/4" square of standard origami paper. The shrimp body is 6" long (uncurled) with 1 1/4" long antennae. The whole model is 6 1/2" from antenna to tail.