open back octagonal twist, backlit
Originally uploaded by Origomi.

my second foray into octagons. a little better, although the folding method for all this takes a little getting used to. since an octagon is not a “pure” tessellat-able polygon (can’t use it to fill the plane just by itself) all the creases don’t necessarily line up to make things you might want to make.

that being said, it’s really a lot like two sets of squares, rotated by 45 degrees with respect to each other. this gets a little confusing as the crease pattern can look a LOT like normal squares w/ 45 degree diagonals, but it’s not- most of the creases never match up in any “proper” spots that you think they might. They do, however, do a lot of interesting things, which I’m going to have to take some time to explore.

One very interesting thing that I noticed is that the octagon repeats itself- growing outward in a linear fashion, each set of creases makes another larger octagon. This is interesting, of course, as it seems to lend itself to making “tower” shaped patterns ala Chris Palmer and his flower towers. I have no desire to reinvent the wheel, so I’m going to avoid that particular shape unless I come across it by accident.

so, the next step is to try to tessellate this… and oddly enough, I have sheets of vellum (translucent paper) in 30cm x 30cm size. I’m turning into a backlit tessellation freak. well, I’m not, I promise, but I’m sure Owesen would read this with much distaste. My wife bought the paper so I don’t need an excuse here as to why I have it 🙂

an interesting pattern, this one, and probably something I can/should diagram. it’s relatively easy, I think, but I’m going to have to knock down the number of prefolds first. most of the ones I made aren’t necessary.