Pseudo origami animals

2014-03-18

 

 

This was a commissioned work I did for a company, as promotional items for a trade show. The idea was to provide easy, precut templates that would fold into origami-like animals effortlessly and without glue. We wanted to give people something they could play with, even if they had never done any kind of papercrafting or origami before.

bear

Honestly, if you take origami seriously, this is sacrilege. Cutting a piece of paper to make it look like an origami model is the very antithesis of the original idea, but in the end it was clear that true origami would be too inaccessible for the average casual trade show visitor.

Anyway, people liked the animals – a lot. This is what the precut templates looked like before folding: The bear…

P1310123

 

… and the rhino:

P1310124

 

 

And here are both after folding:

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The rhinoceros consists of two pieces, the head and the body. The head is held in place by a thin center cut that goes over the horn:

P1310138

Interestingly, we had the final, folded versions as giveaways, but everyone asked for the unfolded templates. They wanted to do the folding themselves.

Here are the templates. Since these were designed to be machine cut, they are a bit complicated to cut manually, especially the rhino, but certainly not impossible.

 

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Comments

  1. Lucy,

    I have cut and folded up a bear, but I am not sure where it needs gluing. Please help!

    1. admin,

      The bear actually does not need gluing. When you fold it along the middle line, you should be able to put it up standing. If not, either the surface on which it stands is too smooth, or you need to use stronger cardstock. If that doesn’t help, gluing a small strip of paper to the inside of both flanks, connecting them near the bottom, should help.

  2. Pepe,

    Wow its a great model i like bears and so i use it for sweet decoration. Thanxxxxx so much.

  3. german,

    Fabulous!!

    Great job. I am into paper models. The adjective pseudo origami does not make justice to these beautiful models. This is called kirigami, as opposed to origami. In kirigami, you cut, fold and interlock paper to give volume and shape.

    Congrats!

    1. admin,

      Thanks for the kind words! Well, you are right, it’s kirigami. The reason I called it pseudo origami was that these were modeled after actual origami, so they mimick the look of the origami animals they are based on.

  4. Cindy Dahlgren,

    wonderful! I may try cutting these out on my own, have exacto and mat, good cutting skills, might work!

  5. Sebastian,

    WOW, tolle Sache! (Mal wieder) Wusste gar nicht, dass du jetzt damit sogar Geld verdienen kannst ;-) Super & Danke. Werd morgen gleich anfangen..

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