The last in this series. Just sharing the quasi-final product with you, in case you were following along. What do you think?
It needs some arrows and of course it’s missing the instructive text, but then again it’s not for public consumption in this state of completion.
If nothing else, I have picked up a new technique for future personal efforts, and that’s never a bad thing to have.
I’ve been working on some illustration techniques, to try to make illustrations for a project I am working on. I am most definitely not an illustrator (a glance at my work will “illustrate” that) but I’m trying to learn a bit; this technique of tracing over an existing image works well, but it becomes very important to capture the right image to use- bad angles, weird shadows, and other things that get in the way will make your traced-over illustration particularly inaccurate.
In this case, I cut’n’pasted the 5 different shots I was working with into a single doc for your viewing (dis)pleasure; this does not represent the layout or anything of that nature, so don’t worry about that. I threw some shadows onto the illustration in the upper right corner to try out a technique for doing that- I’m reasonably pleased with the results, but it needs some tweaking, and some better attention to light source directionality.
Also, it was suggested in the comments on the flickr photo that I add an additional step between (4) and (5), with which I agree. I had thought there was a little bit of a leap there, for the uninitiated, and I received some confirmation on that. Others suggested no need for the shading, which is also possible- would good shading help? I will have to try changing it so the shading helps to directly indicate the paper’s direction, as I’m noticing from the thumbnail that this one is a bit confusing.
But all in all, I am thinking this technique is more clear than photos, at least for showing the basics of tessellation folding. Ultimately, folding complex tessellation pieces requires a lot of attention to detail and understanding the basics, more than anything. So I am thinking that with a stronger emphasis on the basics, less can be said about the complex pieces, in terms of in-depth step-by-step instructions.
Is this wrong thinking on my part? Does everyone need rigorous, fully-illustrated step-by-step instructions for everything, even if it is a tessellation including potentially thousands of separate folds? Because if that’s the case, then any sort of actual folding instruction would be impossible.
I like to think that tessellation folders reach a certain point where they suddenly “get it”, and a light bulb goes off in their mind- they instantly have understanding of how the concept works, and what is required to not only fold the tessellation they are working on, but any other tessellation they might want to create as well.
We’ll see how that theory works out in practice…
I highly recommend you check out the fledgling website belonging to Ron Resch, a visionary mathematician and designer who was one of (if not *the*) first to explore the architectural potential of 3D tessellated structures in the 1960’s and 70’s.
Only lately have I been exposed to more of his work, and the more I see the more I want to know. He has a film- called “The Paper and Stick Film”- which is apparently quite a fascinating thing to watch. He has a link to purchase this from his website, but it still seems to be a non-functioning link. (The minute this becomes available I’m buying it!)
It looks like he updated his site with some more photos of his patents and some additional historical photos of things he has worked on, too, so if you’ve been to the site before I suggest visiting it again.
Tom Hull talked a good bit about Resch at the Origami USA convention this year, and really intrigued me to look further into his designs. Only recently have I started exploring 3D tessellations myself, and so seeing his innovative thoughts from way back when is really an eye-opener for me.
One thing that really hit me today as I was looking at his site (yet again) was this curving folded piece, made up of out pleats. I like the way it captures an essence- flight, perhaps, or maybe something a bit more ethereal than that.
Sometime soon I need to make a pilgrimage up to Vegreville in Alberta, Canada to see his giant Easter Egg, made for the large Ukrainian community on the High Prairies to celebrate their heritage. There’s some more information about that on his site as well, which is worth looking at. Do a google search for it too, you won’t regret it.
-Eric
Update 2012: As Ron Resch has passed away, his website has fallen into the hands of domain scavengers – so I’ve removed the links to the content. If it reappears somewhere else in the future I will re-link.
I’ve been spending way too much time lately exploring pleated, three-dimensional structures.
With this little fold, I was wanting to see a 3D shell-like fan shaped piece; it’s not really quite what I was looking for, but it’s also interesting, so I left it as-is with the intention of trying to make another one later. After wetfolding it a bit (to assist with the thick pleats at the center) the shape kind of grew on me.
I recently folded a much larger sheet of 4 of these shapes- essentially a tessellation of this design. It is nice, but I wasn’t quite happy with how it turned out- there’s a really complicated bit of magic involved with how the pleats + diagonal creases work out, so even if your rectangles are off by a tiny bit you don’t get the same result. In this design, the ratio of the rectangles is 2:9, for reference, which seems to work the best; the larger example I made is more like 2:9.5, and that doesn’t come out the same.
I’ll post some photos of the larger version when I eventually get around to wetfolding it all, but that might take a bit of time. There’s also the matter of excess paper that needs some ornamentation but I have yet to decide what to do with it, so until a solution presents itself it is living in the “unfinished” box… which is getting rather full, these days.
I called this design “Pecten Magellanicus”, named after the sea scallop, which it reminds me of. Since the fold itself is thick and 3D, it has a very strong resemblance to this little shellfish, even if the geometry is a little off.
Fredrik Owesen did some reverse-engineering of the folding techniques mastered by Yuko Nishimura, a long-time favorite of mine. (if you like pleating and tessellations, Nishimura is probably also a favorite of yours, too!)
Fredrik gave a little description of how to accomplish this type of folding:
I’ll try to write up some sort of how-to, although I suspect they tend to be confusing.
I’ve grown pretty lazy in terms of folding methods lately, so this will be based on that. You begin by drawing the crease pattern on the sheet you want to fold, using a sharpish ballpointpen, one without ink or a color matched to the paper is good. First lines divide the sheet in long rectangular lines (1). Turn the sheet, then using some sort of curved guide (found a cheap flexible ruler well suited for the purpose), fill in the curves that go between the lines from the previous step.
Use the lines you just drew, both curved and straight, to mark up a grid by forming lines perpendicular to these. The curved lines will give the grid some unevenness, but when forming the grid treat them as straight lines, ignoring the spacing. Turn the sheet over and create a similar grid 50% ofset from the other.
Using these marks it is easy to fill in the zigzag pattern, mountainfold on one side, then flip the sheet over for the valley folds. Collapse it into shape when all the creases are there.
I’ve long wanted to fold something like this, so thanks for the hints, Fredrik. Now to sit down and give it a try…
