How to fold 2 action models in less than 60 seconds

This is the first of a series of videos from last weekend's 10th annual Cherry Blossom Festival in Monterey Park. I have a new camera now with a 4 GB memory card, allowing me to take long clips; so no more need to "mask" the defects of my footage "cutting out" with music. I will start putting up some videos with the natural sounds.

Sometimes parents bring their kids to our tables, wanting us to teach their child something. A problem arises when the kid proves to be 2 years old. Often, the parent will find himself assisting his kid...then pretty much taking over all folding chores himself.

One of my favorite models to do for young kids is Yami's banger; which I can quickly transition into a moving mouth. I like it, because I can either fold this extremely fast for a young child with a short attention span; or, I can teach it fairly easily to kids old enough to understand the words that are coming out of my mouth.

Yami will use the banger model as a warm-up exercise for a new group of people at his table. It also allows one to gage the folding abilities of one's students.

It's fun to not tell the group what they are folding; I just tell them we are going to make a super complex model- something that is an absolute work of artistic beauty. When we are done folding the banger, of course it doesn't look like much of anything. I let them guess as to what it might be. A lot of times kids will say it's a book. I'll let them know that this is no ordinary book, because this book you don't have to read; it actually talks to you. Right before I move my arm up to snap it, I'll sometimes ask, "Oh...what's that over there?" and point behind them. As they turn their heads to look, I'll unload a thunderous snap from the banger.

In this video, I show a very fast transition to the moving mouth. One that works for me. If I'm folding the model for a child, I like to let them feel involved in the process by at least allowing them to glue on eyeballs (or drawing them in with a marker- you can also write a message inside the mouth). Joe uses eyeball stickers; I like those button eyeball thingies with the eyes that float around in the bubble. You can either apply glue stick yourself to where the eyes should go, or hand over full control to the child and give him the glue stick...and see exactly where the child thinks those eyes should be applied onto the model.

People seem to see different things when they see the moving mouth. For instance, some see a frog, others see Godzilla. Most everyone though, universally see that origami is fun and entertaining.

Later, I'll post a video up of Yami teaching the banger transition to the moving mouth, during our on-stage demonstration. He has a good method for teaching how to fold the mouth; mine is designed for expediency, from a performance standpoint for an audience.