This weekend we’re having the first real hot weather of the year, in the mid to upper 80’s. It’s also the weekend of the carnival at the kids’ school. I helped out last night at the Fathers’ Club Food Tent, and will be helping out tonight and tomorrow in the games booths. These school events get more and more fun as I get to know more parents and families. There’s a great sense of community that I never felt in the old school. Plus it’s interesting, but I guess not surprising, how Establishment it is. The local cops and firemen are all out showing support. Heck some of them are parents of the school. I’m still conditioned from the days of my youth to see cops as a threat, so it feels weird to learn they’re normal, friendly guys.
I have alot of vacation time to use up this summer, and so I’m taking my first summer Friday to do some origami so I have some new models for convention. I have few things that I’m working on. First is a pair of new animals, a dog and a cat. I’d been thinking about doing a dog and cat for a while, but they’re pretty challenging subjects. There are lots of cats and dogs out there, ranging from simple and stylized to realistic and complex, capturing a wide range of moods and styles. Plus cats and dogs are very familiar to humans. It won’t do to simply have the right configuration of limbs; the model has to say something.
I found my way in to approach these subjects as a request from a friend. She had recently created a website for an animal adoption service in Queens – Timber’s Legacy (timberslegacy.org). The website logo features a dog and cat in silhouette and she asked me if I could fold them as gift for the lady who runs the service.
The idea that the animals are sitting allowed me to focus more on the overall shape and sculptural aspects rather than worrying much about the base and where the points for all the legs would come from. The dog in particular has pointy ears, and you don’t see that much in origami dogs. Once I had the dog worked out, I figured the cat would be a simple variation, but it turned out the pretty different. Not only is the head and face totally different, but the long tail required a whole new geometry and base. Finally, the body posture, neck and shoulders were different enough to have to come up with a new treatment.
I’ve been folding lots of cats and dogs the last few weeks. They’re not too complex and take less than a half hour to fold. I’m still refining the details, particularly on the cat, before I attempt to fold exhibit quality ones out of good paper.
The other thing I’ve been working on is an approach to combine polyhedra with tessellations. I came up with a successful prototype for a sixty-sided shape based on a dodecahedron. More on that soon.
