Gallery

Origami Water Strider designed and folded by me.
42cm cabbage paper from @cabbagepaper | 28 grid | Water Strider Folding Steps

Another insect design, this time to fit a theme topic of “Ocean” (for a design competition entry). I figured I should keep going with the insect designs and thought a water strider would do. This time, I drew the packing on graph paper on a bus ride (as I didn’t have my laptop on me) in about an hour. It would’ve only taken minutes had I done it on the computer as I had to erase a lot.

This particular piece of paper I got from a leftover pile of defective cabbage paper after Matt taught his paper making class. It was only after randomly searching through my piles of paper that I found it and realized the color was perfect. The paper only had minor warping and was still very easy to work with.

@dexnamkung  June 2025

Giant Jawed Sawyer designed and folded by me.
3 days to design and fold  |  43cm cabbage paper from @cabbagepaper  |  44 grid  |  Giant Jawed Sayer Folding Steps

This design started when @kadensorigami posted a few images of some insects. After designing the Longhorn beetle, I felt I should continue to design more simpler insects because they’re mostly easy to design (with intuition of course) with a mostly objective folding process that allows for clean results. From the images, I thought the giant jawed sawyer would be most doable and so I sketched a packing in pretty short time. By allowing myself to design more complex stuff, designing these more simple insects is very enjoyable and something I want to continue doing.

@dexnamkung  May 2025

Medieval Commander designed and folded by me
117cm kozo paper  |  64grid with partial 128ths for the boots and 256ths for the torso  |  Medieval Commander Folding Steps  |  Medieval Commander Crease Pattern

This design started when @jkonkkola_origami posted his Warlord where I was struck by how representative and complex it looked. I quickly realized I was missing a detailed humanoid in my design collection and decided to create one with many features all over. The design ended up taking me a little less than 1.5 months but I worked on it for several hours on most days. Because I wanted to add so many features, I had to learn many new structures and transitions to integrate it all.

Some structural bits were inspired by other models. Juho’s Viking with the scales and phenomenal shaping and @adnkami ‘s use of angle ridge to add patterns were the main ones.

Making the crease pattern gave me a headache. I knew the grid would be somewhat big in the beginning but I originally had no idea how I would fill all the space. Later, I kept shifting the arms, torso and legs which caused me to lose track of proper placement numerous times. And during shaping, I had to figure out how to compact the scales in a solid position (so the figure didn’t look fat) and care for the connection of the front and back for a seamless connection.

It’s been nearly two years since I made my first design and less than a year since I’ve devoted myself to origami designing. I look back many times to see the progress I’ve made to try and understand how I got this far so quickly. I can see I’ve come a long way since but there’s still lots of room for improvement. The annual origami convention is also coming up and I’m excited to have an exhibit that consists of many of my own designs instead of designs by others.

@dexnamkung  July 2024