Posts about paper engineering

Origami Elephant

For my final project I designed this origami elephant:

animation showing origami elephants sitting on a white piece of paper. The elephants are made with purple, orange and blue paper.

This isn't an origami model from a book, it is a model I came up with myself. I also made a YouTube tutorial you can watch to learn how to make one of your own.

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Origami Experiments

For our final project we need to design and build something to present in the next and final class. This is a half semester class so the final project is due the same time as other midterms.

I'm interested in origami and want to learn how to fold interesting designs. For the final I am going to design my own origami model, document it, and present it next week.

To prepare for this I need to get a lot better at folding origami. I started by following Youtube tutorials. My first was a crane:

origami crane, with two wide wings a neck and head in the front and a long thin tail in the back.

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Larger Paper Car

Based on feedback from last week's visit at a school, I improved my car design and made it twice as big. See photos below:

Two images of a paper car. The car is a traditional sedan and is made from heavy white cardstock paper.

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Paper Car

Tomorrow we are going to visit a school to share our work. Our goal was to make a paper toy kit to share with the students. We need to bring one fully assembled and one ready to be assembled by the children.

After much thought, I made this paper car:

model that looks like a sedan-type car, with two wheels on each side.

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Fun Toy

Our next assignment was to use what we learned in the first two classes to design and build a fun toy. I created a human face with moving eyes and mouth. The eyes can move side to side and the mouth can smile and sulk.

Animation showing a few states of the paper human face, drawn with pencil. It is looking straight ahead, to the right, and to the left. When looking to the left it has a sad mouth orientation.

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First Pop-up

In our first class we learned about basic paper engineering and pop-ups. Our assignment was to make a paper bug using a template. Here is the result:

folded paper card with a raised rectangular surface in the center, some paper arms sticking out the side of the raised surface, and two holes at the top for eyes.

I used scissors and an exacto knife to cut the paper. All of the paper is attached using one-sided artist tape except for the bug's arms, which are attached with two-sided tape. I found the bone folder to be very useful for making good folds.

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