Origomi - Eric Gjerde's weblog on Origami & etc.

I just registered www.origamitessellations.com today! I figured that was a good first step to motivate myself to commit some of my material to a more permanent form. I've got a few quick pages of writeup that I'm looking to post soon, although formatting is still a bit of a problem. I'm just not great at the whole "graphic designer" role, and usually I'm able to pawn off that sort of work to others.

regardless, I'm looking forward to sharing some more in-depth material with you folks out there, and of course I'm hoping to actually get some traffic to the site. I always feel better about sharing materials when I know that people really are looking at it (who doesn't?)

So, make sure you check it in a few weeks or so- http://www.origamitessellations.com. thanks!

-Eric

So, after playing around a bit with some "regular tessellations in the Euclidean plane" I thought about making a lamp out of some of them. I found the following photo:



I'm thinking of making it out of some dark wood, and filling the center with some sort of appropriately folded translucent design. I received my copy of Make: magazine (volume 2!) in the mail last week, and there was an article about using Minwax wood hardener to turn cardboard into plastic. I'm tempted to use something like this to completely solidify a folded work, so it's tear resistant/proof and will be easier to manipulate in a lamp setting.

if I can pull this off it will be pretty nifty, I think. looking forward to seeing how it works out. nothing wrong with branching out into some creative explorations.

of course, let's hope that the hardening material doesn't turn the lamp into a firebomb waiting to go off!

this makes a nice chain style pattern that's rather pleasing to look at, and really easy to fold. I'm looking to fold some of this out of translucent paper, turn it into plastic (using a minwax product mentioned in Make: magazine issue 2) and build a lamp out of it. hopefully my dad will help me put together the appropriate wood to make it look nice!

look for photos in this space for such an object once it happens...

I believe this is the origami waves folded by schoolkids for some tsunami relief effort. it's thomas hull's model, if I recall correctly.

it's a very nice photo that someone's taken- when I heard about it I didn't really think it would look this nice! but it's very good.

So I've been trying to find ways to do some documentation/diagramming of one of my models, to actually get something done. I picked the star twist tessellation, as you can fold a pretty decent one (that's not really a tessellation, as we're not repeating it, but let's not nitpick.)

I folded one up, well unfolded one really, and started tracing out all the creases on it. ugh. there's a lot of silly little folds there! although I think doing this for all my models will probably give me a better sense of how they work, as I have to sit and think about parts of it that I just fold instinctively when I'm creating things.

I'd post a shot of the work in progress here, but I haven't hooked up my scanner in a while so I don't want to dig it out of the closet at the moment. (yes, I'm just that lazy).

and of course I'll slap it on flickr, just because I really really like putting stuff on flickr. it makes my day. especially getting random feedback from people; it's nifty.

more than ANYTHING I was amazed to see people looking at this page other than myself. that's a bit shocking, really. glad you people found this interesting enough to actually sit through a post or two. I have a sign in my office at work that says "YOUR BLOG SUCKS". I've always told myself I'd never have one, because hearing about people's cats or their hard day at work filing mortgage paperwork is very dull. that's why I'm trying to stick to a topic that I might have something to talk about, and I'm not whinging on about my hard day at the office. or my cats. because I'm nice like that. or something.

I should mention that I normally capitalize sentences and things of that nature, but my shift key on this PC is a bit dodgy and thusly I'm coming across like a bad mix between e.e. cummings and a 12 year old girl texting on a cell phone. I apologize for that.

I'm trying to gear myself up to go downstairs and cut up some rather fancy imported washi paper that's been in my art closet for about a year now. Owesen (of flickr fame and international jet-setter) informed me that there's no excuse not to use it, and I think he's right. that still doesn't make me feel any less a sense of dread about cutting up this paper, as I tend to make bad cuts. at least I'm not a surgeon!

hope the weekend finds you all well. happy folding!

so I'm doing a bit of googling for hexagonal tessellations and I found this page... which had photos of mine from flickr on it, and a link to me on the top. weird.

http://www.taggling.de/tag/hexagon


So I'm a little clueless as to how that happened, but whatever. I'm happy with having people look at my artwork, it's not like I'm putting it online to keep it secret or anything!

I need to make a point to mention origami in every post, too, so it shows up in technorati and other pages like that. I'm just a sucker for attention. origami tessellations right here, people!

part 2 of 2- this time with some chiyogami paper (that's like saying chai tea- redundant. but I'm saying it anyway.)

my adorable wife needs some of these to make me a spiffy origami scrapbook, so I'm going to fold a few more. I think they'd make some nifty little pins if I shrunk the fold down a bit smaller. I think I'd have to lacquer them or something... not sure how I'd go about doing that. I'll leave it to the jewelry pro of the house and stick to what I do best. (which ISN'T that!)

star twist- one of a set of two. like the flecked paper, although most of the shiny metal bits are on the back. nice look, though. I dig it.

this one gets 15 degree long, sharp points, and is kind of fractalicious in how it iterates each turn around. need to work on it with larger paper and see how it folds out.

psycho pinwheel action... clicky to flickr and look at the whole set. not too shabby I think. needs nicer paper, but as always this was the intro piece, so I used scrap for it.

Satoshi Kamiya's "ancient dragon", I think. I don't remember exactly what he called it, but this is from Ronald Koh's photos of the FAS2005 con. this is an amazing fold, and really represents just a wholly different level of folding skill. I'm in awe. 

chocolate twist, backlit. my wife seems to think these look like some sort of fancy chocolate, so that's what I'm calling it. 

the chocolate twist. 

A great photo from Ronald Koh at the FAS 2005 convention. it's at http://uk.pg.photos/yahoo.com/ph/tanchooranda/ ! 

here's some great photos I found from the spring BOS convention.


alex bateman's tessellations. There's only one photo, sadly!

also worth taking a peek at is Mark Leonard's folds.

I'd love to go to one of these conventions! I'd definitely have to spend quite a bit of time folding up a bunch of work to take, and use some nicer paper for them. I'm somewhat hampered by a lack of good working space, and "good working times". my biggest creative periods tend to be during times of the day when I'm supposed to be doing other things, like working for example!

One of the folks from the Origami Minnesota group went to the BOS con, since she's an editor of BOS and all that. I was hoping to see some of her work there but no such luck. I'll have to ask her about the next time I see her.

I came up with a new star tessellation using some more of the funky 30 degree folds. I'm trying to slowly start working some of the new techniques into the things I come up with, because there's such a large possibility of folds that I get a little overwhelmed.

I've been trying to work on a pentagon-based fold, but that's coming pretty slowly- the precreasing is a PAIN IN THE BUTT. seriously. and this coming from someone who happily folds 500+ precreased lines at a shot.

regardless, here's another one that has a "pretty" outcome on lower iteration levels. this fold comes out after only 4 iterations deep, which is nice as it's quite a few less folds than 5 or 6 (6 levels is like 2 straight days of prefolding!)

I'm working on starting to diagram, I figured something is better than nothing and if I can get the ideas down maybe someone else with better illustrator skills than I will help me clean it up. (we'll see on that one!)

-Eric

so I remember looking at OrigamiKid's models quite a while back on Flickr. I was searching for "diagrams" tags and I happened to see these very nicely drawn diagrams for one of his creations. I'm quite impressed by them, as that's somewhat how I'd like to be able to diagram my work.

he definitely has some drawing/diagramming skill, as that's some fine line work... but it's motivated me to try it myself.

I got a free notebook in the mail today, very nice and seemingly quite adequate for such purposes. I'll give it a go and see what happens!

not exactly origami, but beautiful nonetheless. This lady makes quite a bit of excellent work, and it's definitely worth a look.

Came across this awesome modular, featuring some excellent 60 degree twists. looks great!