Sunday, July 27, 2014

POP Today

Some photos from today's Pacific Ocean Paperfolders meeting, which made its return to the new and improved Roxbury Recreational Center in Beverly Hills last month, after over a year of reconstruction:








Turnout was good.


More photos here.




Origami Socks




Ozone Designs (France)- the Art of Socks- carries some origami-themed socks, priced at $20, as part of their Spring line:

Origami butterflies

Origami crane socks

Origami flower socks


Hat tip:  Louise via O-List

Sunday Funnies




Source

Monday, July 14, 2014

CSULB Origami Festival







Turnout was lighter this year than in past years, perhaps due to the World Cup. 

Yami scratched, so I manned his traditional table spot and entertained and taught the Thai tulip.

I didn't take a break and the only pictures I managed to take happened prior to the public arriving through the gate.



Pictures here.


Photo taken by Alison Redfoot with Hisako Tanji's camera

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Video Tutorials or Diagrams on Paper?

NYTimes talks about the rise of online tutorials in comparison to "traditional" books and diagrams:

For centuries, lovers of the ancient art had to consult books to uncover such secrets. Increasingly, though, experts and novices alike are learning about origami through online films and videos.
 
There are animated shorts — like Sipho Mabona’s “Origami Rhino Unfolding,” a 21-second wonder of stop motion animation — and commercials, like one Mr. Lang did for Mitsubishi, in which an S.U.V. rolls through a forest and then a city constructed purely of origami figures. There are documentaries, like Vanessa Gould’s seminal 2008 film “Between the Folds,” and scores of time-lapse shorts, like “Origami Scaled Koi,” by a Munich folder, Sara Adams, condensing 14 ½ hours of labor into a minute-long video. Perhaps reflecting the ever-growing complexity of some pieces, there are even “making of” films, like the one produced for Mr. Mabona’s origami installation “The Plague,” a socially conscious work in which stacks of dollar bills are transformed into a swarm of locusts.
       

And then there are the online tutorials, which teach in ways that origami books, with their arrows and dotted lines and static images, never could. Creators of these videos, like Ms. Adams, have their own fan bases, with their most popular lessons drawing millions of YouTube hits.
 
“The advantage is that you can show the continuous action from one step to the next,” Mr. Lang said. “In book instructions, each diagram gives you a snapshot, and you have to infer the action between these snapshots. Now that we have video, you can see the action. You can slow things down and move back and forth between folds.”
Read the rest of the article at the NYTimes.

Hat tip:  Dick and Serena LaVine on the O-List

Monday, July 07, 2014

1st Sunday at Marti's without Marti


I believe Marti went straight from the OUSA Convention in NYC to England.  She missed a really big turnout at her place, Sunday.

Jim Cowling came with a friend, just to check out Ken Hmoob's dollar horse book, which Ron Fujioka purchased and said he'd bring to the meeting.  120 pages of step photos, in black and white.

I brought Joe.





Photos here.

Sunday, July 06, 2014

Sunday Funnies



According to dragonaura:


Apocalypse no Toride- a zombie manga by Kuraishi Yuu, and Inabe Kazu

Thursday, July 03, 2014

Convention covered in WSJ Video Blog


The Convention as covered in a video blog from the Wall Street Journal:



The four-day OrigamiUSA convention, held at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York, drew 650 people from a dozen countries across the Americas, Europe and Asia. The largest contingent was from the U.S., followed by Japan. And the convention is serious business — each attendee received  a “survival kit,” which included a packet of origami paper and a giant schedule of the 215 classes offered.

Susan Wettling, of Knoxville, Tenn., was seeking help from Hajime Komiya, a Tokyo-based origami artist. Despite no shared language, Mr. Komiya was walking her through the steps. “I knew he was going to be at this convention and needed his help,” Ms. Wettling said.

Soon after the convention opened on Friday, a crowd had gathered at the colorful display of origami models, which represented the classes offered, ranging in level from simple to complex.

By Saturday morning, 20 classes were sold out, including Jeremy Shafer’s “One-Piece Super Boomerang.” Primarily a juggler and children’s entertainer, Mr. Shafer is the author of three origami books and has an origami YouTube channel with about 25 million views and 70,000 subscribers.
He spent two days designing the one-sheet boomerang. Over the course of 50 rejects, he realized his mistake was in making it like a pinwheel. “I had to do a special move” to get the four arms into an exact “X,” he said.

Robert J. Lang’s 3D origami cat was another sellout class. A physicist and engineer, with dozens of patents, who became a full-time origami artist, Mr. Lang says the math ideas behind the art form of origami have applications in engineering. Such examples are air bags, medical implants as well as solar arrays and telescopes that have to get into the rockets that carry them. “Folding helps make a big thing small in a controlled way,” he said.

Go to the WSJ link to read the rest.

Hat tip: Jeremy Shafer