An Origami Gallery

Yoda

An instantly-recognizable model. There are some interesting folds in here; the whole model is folded, unfolded, collapsed, unfolded, re-collapsed a bunch of times. This would look better with dual-color paper, but I make do with what I have.

Ceolophysis

Another great model by Kamiya-san. This guy somehow manages to stand on those tiny feet if you balance him properly.

Eagle Ray

An easy model that ends up with more detail than you'd guess at a glance (it has a mouth and gills under there).

Chocobo ("The Yellow Bird")

Do you like Final Fantasy? Do you like origami? Buy Kamiya-san's book. You won't regret it. Many of the models in the book are so difficult that they're likely well beyond what beginners can manage, but the chocobo is a more intermediate-level model and probably most people could fold it given a bit of time and effort. I love this model. I've folded tons of them.

Dollar-bill Koi

You can get diagrams for this guy on the above website. Through some miracle, there are two little loops on a US one dollar bill that are right in the perfect spot to make the koi's eyes. Even without that touch, this model impresses anyone who views it.

A Mirua-ken Beauty Rose

This is a fun model to fold. I like to make these for people for gifts. This is one of those amazing models that justifies buying a whole book just to get your hands on the diagrams. (Tanteidan 12th Convention has tons of other good models too though, trust me.) See here for the origin of the name (the name is a pun that many people seem not to get).

Fox Terrier

I'm trying to figure out wet-folding. This didn't turn out too badly. The dog's face would be hard or impossible to do this way without wet-folding.

Songbird

If you have some paper that can keep a 3D shape, this model turns out very well. Folding the feet is about 50% of the work for this one.

Lizard

Another simple model but it turns out nice if you use small paper. This never turned out too well when I made it out of larger paper. I had a lot of green paper left over from the tree frog, can you tell?

Tree Frog

I now have a new understanding for the term "unstable dye". My hands are very green due to the dye from this tissue paper rubbing off. But the splotched paper is actually kind of nice for a frog (you don't see many solid green monotone frogs in the wild, do you?). This model is lots of fun to fold. Not as hard as it looks.

Derudas Frog

A tiny simple frog. This model is typically wet-folded, but I couldn't wet-fold to save my life. It turned out OK in tissue foil too. I made this because I had a scrap of tissue foil left over, and those scraps can't go to waste.

Longhorn Beetle

If you like box pleating, this is the model for you. This is all box pleating. A good half the paper is devoted to the antennae of the beetle. The head never quite comes out right when I fold this. If I had thinner paper to use it might be a better result. This model universally creeps out everyone I've shown it to (including me, to some degree.)

Cactuar

This is the first model I ever invented myself that I consider to be any good. If you've ever played the Final Fantasy line of video games, you should recognize this. It's a bit sloppy to make but it works and it's recognizable, which is all I care about. I wish it was more 3-D though.

Tarantula

I've folded this model tons of times. It has a lot of interesting sinks in the middle of the folding sequence that took me a while to figure out. I used purplish paper for this partly because of something Nicolas Terry wrote in Origami for Interpreters:

"...it may be better to move as far away as possible from the animal's natural color than to have a bad imitation of it."

None of my brown paper was very tarantula-like.

Scorpion

This model is one of many scorpion models by Robert Lang. This one has variable-length legs which more closely matches the anatomy of a real scorpion. It was fairly enjoyable to fold, though my final product ended up with stumpy legs in front. The thickness of the tail is quite pleasing.