Asian Elephant

Name	Asian Elephant
Designer	John Szinger
Level of Difficulty (5x ☻= hardest)	☻☻☻
Type (According to Number of Sheets Used)	Singular Sheet
Type (According to Object being Presented)	Animal
Diagrams	Origami Animal Sculptures (John Szinger)
Video Tutorial	Origami Animal Sculptures (Free CD with book by John Szinger)

Represented here is the Asian Elephant, the less majestic cousin of the African Elephant (kidding). This is designed by John Szinger, an amazing artist and the author of the lovely yet horribly expensive book (for me) stated above. (I sacrificed my last allowance from school to buy that book!)

The Asian or Asiatic Elephant (Elephas maximus) is distributed from India to Borneo. It is slightly smaller than the African Elephant. The species, the only species in the genus Elephans is considered endangered.

If you have folded this model, do not hesitate posting a photo of your work to the blog's Facebook page!

-ABonymous

Beetle

This is designed by Jo Nakashima. He also made a tutorial and posted it on his YouTube channel.

Everyone loves beetles, right? Well, I find them cute...in photos. When I face the real thing, I cringe a little  When I played with some in a beach house in Sariaya by trapping the beetles in a small container, I again adored the cuteness of them...until I released them at the beach. Those f@king things LITERALLY attacked me. And I went off the beach scurrying while leaving my slippers stuck in the sand in the process.

Moving back to the topic, this model, which looks complicated, is still complicated...but not as hard as it looks. A lot of those back-and forth folds are incorporated in this model, which can make the paper easily rip. Ugh...even the paper here is cheap. Make sure to use thin paper for this.

Well, of course, good practice makes perfect. (Thumbs up) (But nobody is perfect, so why practice? XD JOKE.)

Geometric Bird

This is a design by Roman Diaz. You may find the diagrams in his book "Origami Essence."

Look at that cute bird :) It has the body of a box yet can stand on its own two feet :3

It's kinda easy, but of course I had to take in considerations in puffing up the model, and make it, err.....geometrical. :) What do I mean by geometrical? The bird is basically a polyhedron thingy draped with a bird's costume, I think.

Plus, another hard thing is that I had to position it's cute pointy feet in a way that the bird is balanced and can stand up properly. The bird must be having problems with it's cuboid-like body.....at least give it some balance. :D

Note to self: Write the post about Diaz's Owls......

Tarantula

This is one of the hardest models I have ever folded: Robert Lang's Tarantula.

I did this model in honor of a friend (who has a really terrible phobia with tarantulas....yes, it can be insulting XD). And for me, this model is TERRIBLY hard (well, because it's ROBERT LANG, one of the greatest origami masters EVER).

This is my second attempt to make this origami model (the first one was a huge failure.....I was too stupid then to know that I can cut a 1:3 paper without folding a square first...And now.....eh.

As you can see it didn't turn out very much like Lang's version (once again, because it's by LANG) but we could say that it's a tarantula about to jump :) (I stated the same thing to my friend and then he shouted at me XD....yes he's a he).

The diagrams can be found in "The Complete Book of Origami" authored by LANG himself.

Remember the useless difficulty level I usually give? Let's apply it here :D from a scale of 1-10, 10 being the hardest, I would give a 10, 583, 759, 234. :) (joke)

Anyways, it was a fun model to create :)

Oh yeah, you can also find a tutorial of another of Lang's tarantulas (a different model, not featured in this post)  which apparently looks more complicated.

Snail

This particular model is designed by Komatsu Hideo or Hideo Komatsu, since Japanese tend to put their last name first and now I can't tell which one is which.

You can find the diagrams in Tanteidan Convention Book # 19. P.S. The instructions for this model contains 102 steps. Meh, I know you can do it, though it's not very simple.

I've been stuck up with geometric forms and tessellations for so long, so I decided to make more animals besides the butterfly and the red flappy bird-like thingy I featured before. So, I just started randomly looking at my followers' photostream, and then HOLY CRAP IT'S AWESOME.

When I was young I had made 2 types of origami snails; One has a completely flat shell where I had to draw the spiral on, or else it will look like a drunk man bending his legs over. The other one looks like a slug which came from a birthday party...

 

I advise using large paper for this one, since the model gets thick in making the head of the snail. I used fresh bond paper (I ain't very eco-friendly am I?). Heck, it even has a watermark.

In making this model, be careful not to tear the paper.

Spotted Butterfly

This is designed by Alfredo Giunta. The diagrams are found here: http://ori500.free.fr/diagrams/local_pdf/Sparrow%20%28Alfredo%20Giunta%29.pdf

Before, I am more of an origami artist who makes geometric forms more than animals. Now, I decided to try animals more.

You have to be very careful in making this model, since there are steps that can rip the model if you do not "watch out."

I appreciate the design of this model since Giunta have exerted much effort into putting detail onto the butterfly. He even put detail on the insect itself. The models I have seen for now only beautify the wings. Im pretty sure, though, that there are also other models like this (like LaFosse's works).

I advise that you do not use thick paper. There are parts where paper can be very hard to fold if you use thick paper (like the head).

You can make one (basically any origami) to a grumpy person to make him or her feel happy, or just to cheer him or her up. :D I gave one to my grandmother who is in the hospital due to a fracture. (Please pray for her.)

(after taking this photo a small white Psyche Butterfly (the animal it was modelled after). Coincidence? I think not. XD)

Fish

This is designed by Davor Vinko.

I have folded this just before New Year, but I only featured this like, 17 days later......Why? Since I was so freaking busy.

Anyway,  The fish is great for beginners. The fish is easy, yet it will also teach you new techniques in Origami. (For example, the pushing technique used in making the eyes).

In short, the fish is simple yet very fascinating. (I would use the word "cute" but somehow I would have needed to punch the windows broken again to feel like a man. XD )

 (Tasted like paper though XD)

The tutorial for this can be found at Jo Nakashima's Youtube Channel.

Little Bird Bookmark

This is designed by Barth Dunkan.
I was looking at some funny images and bastard-looking people (who are not my friends on Facebook…I mean my friends on Facebook are happy and friendly XD sometimes they make my day brighten up a bit) on Facebook.
Then one of my friends message me and tells me to make this cute bookmark.
The model really caught his attention, and knowing that it is origami, he came to me.
Then I said, “Sure, I guess.”
And now, I present to you, this quaint little bookmark which also acts like a stand-alone over-the-edge decoration or maybe an eyesight-destroyer if you use all-red paper and a bastard camera.

If you think the photo is out-of-focus, well it’s just because some parts of the bird is made up of many layers of paper. I never use a poor quality photograph in Origami A Day.
The model is a bit complicated. If I were to rank the model’s difficulty from 1-10, 10 being the hardest, I would give it a 4.
Like a tessellation, you need to fold an 8 by 8 grid on the square paper. There are also so many pre-creasings, but your hard work will be rewarded by a nice bird bookmark in which you have to slam the poor bird’s tail between the 2 pages you are stuck in, in the book.
http://neorigami.com/neo/index.php/en/component/k2/item/7002-little-bird-bookmark