Japanese Commercial with Origami

I found this video at Metacafe.com. It appears to be a Japanese commercial for Filemaker Pro. I believe the racer is by David Brill. How much of it incorporates actual origami and how much is just computer animation? Does anyone know what artists contributed to this video, if any?



Also, check these videos out:

When Good Frogs Go Bad

Robert Lang Interview

Chronicles of WCOG (January 2006 Meeting)

You can see photos here. Just look for the album labeled "Westcoast Origami Guild 2006".


Just realized that I forgot to link this other video in the "Festival" archives, from last February. It's from a Chinese New Year Festival Yami and I did at the Chinese-American Museum in downtown Los Angeles.

2006 Rhombic Calendar

Lar deSouza posted the following to the O-List 5 days ago, and I just now took a look at it today:

Happy New Year to one and all!!

I've skipped doing this the past couple years, but then there's been
others who've taken up the slack. For those not familiar with
it, our late dear friend, Thoki Yenn, worked out how to skew the
angles to fit a calendar onto Nick Robinson's most excellent rhombic
dodecahedron. With vector software it was a simple matter for me to
fit things neatly and convert it to a pdf format. Interested folks
can find the file here.

It's six letter sized pages, each with two months on it, and a last
page with Nick Robinson's diagrams (unaltered) in case you can't find them.

I know I've seen these at WCOG meetings before, with John Andrisan always coming out with interesting printings. But I had never taken an interest, really, until now. It's really a cool concept and a nice, fun, easy fold. Thanks to Lar and thanks to Nick and Thoki!!! The photo is taken of the one I folded tonight. I used semi-glossy all-purpose photo paper. It folded very nicely.

A wallet/cardholder

While surfing on Technorati, I found The Fitful Flog and tried my hand at The Three Card Monti. Here is my result. Read Oschene's description of his model.

His purpose in making this was to cut down on the number of cards he has to carry in his wallet. I liked his idea of attaching the savings cards barcodes to it.

Update: step-photos are now available.

Origami Computer Animation

Found this when ChildofSai posted his new origami video to Origami-L.

Year of the Blog

Er...I mean dog...Happy New Year of the Dog ( beginning January 29th). Yami invited me to help him and Joe out last year, at the New Otani Hotel. It was much the same this year, with me once again teaching among other things, papergliders. I also "taught" the 20-unit flower. Joe taught a cute barking dog action model (Jan 29th being the start of the Chinese Year of the Dog). Yami mostly entertained people with his ring and chain trick. He must have been practicing that diligently since the last time I saw him, as his "batting" average improved quite a bit. When it fails, he usually tells the woman he was showing it to, that he gets nervous in the presence of beautiful women. His friend Hideko did most of the teaching at his table (teaching Yami's doodle bug). Joe gave away FIT's to the fortunate few who were last to leave us. As usual, he had plenty of giveaways that he folded for the purpose of sharing origami with the world. One of my favorite parts is the free meal at the end. We buffeted at The Azalea Restuarant. If anyone ever hangs out with Yami and Joe, it's never a dull moment. Yami showed off to the waiters and to patrons. Joe and I passed around origami giveaways. After my meal, I folded up my napkin into something inappropriate (Won Park showed me this at OUSA2002) and discreetly dropped it into Yami's lap. He stood up and proceeded to show patrons at the next table; then pointed to me and said, "Michael made this." I was mortified. I didn't get a very good shot of the "improper napkin-fold", but you can see a half-drunk Yami pose for the camera with it (it had kind of come undone, at this point, and I didn't think to refold it for the sake of posterity).

How to make the 20-unit flower

Phyllis Snyder of the Westcoast Origami Guild says she and Fumi Wakao were taking a class at the University of Irvine. They met a man who asked if they knew how to do a rose. Phyllis showed him a version of a Kawasaki rose. The man then showed what appeared to Phyllis to be the simple 2x1 3-unit flower with the twist tie. But the one the man was doing went on...and on...and on. 20 units total. He didn't invent it; but he did reverse engineer it. And apparently, it was originally a ball, from which he did the single pipe-cleaner twist-tied rose. The past year, this model has made it's way around from when Phyllis taught it to friends at the Matsuri Festival in Phoenix, to it being taught at OUSA2005. Things travel fast.

If anyone can identify the creator, it'd be much appreciated. As far as I can tell, it's gone the route of the 3-unit flower, and traditional models.

I've had some requests on how to fold this model. Since the assembly might be easier to show than to diagram, I thought I'd video it with my digital camera, and see how that works.


It's a roughly made video without audio instructions. The model itself is simple, but it may need experienced folders to follow the directions (I did make this for some O-Listers). It was a quick make while "on the job" at the New Otani; so the camera work was done on the fly, by whoever I could grab to film it. So forgive the lack of close-ups and more detailed, spoon-fed instructions.






What I love about teaching this model, is that I can teach people in bulk, with newcomers joining in at any given point...because it doesn't require me to be "hands-on" the entire time. You teach the simple unit, very easy to do, and that keeps the folder occupied for the next 10 minutes, folding 19 more. When someone new comes to learn, I can delegate teaching authority and ask one of the students, "Hey, can you teach her how to fold the unit?" or "Can you show her how to assemble the pieces?". It helps me, and it helps the folder who wants to be able to remember and teach her friends later.

If anything in the video is not clear enough, or if you have questions, you might consider leaving questions and suggestions in the comment section on this post, since your comment might not be a unique one, and will address what others are wondering about, themselves.

Again, I am just assuming that the experienced folders will be able to fill in whatever blanks are left in.