Embedded Files
Seahorse Designed and folded by me
25cm mango paper | 22.5 degree design
This design came about after seeing the subject “seahorse” for a design challenge. I quickly made a very basic version from a fish base (two long flaps for the head and tail and two short flaps for the flippers) and knew if I added a graft, it could easily bear lots of resemblance. Figuring out the head took a fair bit of trial and error but I eventually realized just adding a few pleats to the head structure would do the trick. Crease pattern and process in story highlights.
@dexnamkung August 2025
Parrot Skeleton Version 1.1 designed and folded by me
Uncut square of 110cm tracing paper | Two weeks to design and fold | 80x80 grid | Parrot Skeleton Folding Steps
This was designed for the first round of the annual @origami.dan_community design tournament aka death battle against my opponent @stevedc_folds . The theme given to us was tropical birds and I knew right away I was gonna do a skeleton since I only had two weeks.
Designing this was easy but folding it tested my patience. Not only was I competing for votes but also against my expectations. I ended up scrapping the first fold and restarting after realizing a few structural changes would make the final product more resembling of the google reference images I was using, most particularly the head (I simply looked up “parrot skeleton”). I still had 8 days left so I precreased and collapsed a new base, within 2 days and shaped for the remaining 6 days (with a couple late-nighters). In the end I’m glad I restarted because it turned into, imo, my best skeleton design. The last image shows each of my three skeletons, each made exactly 11 months apart and getting progressively better.
@dexnamkung June 2025
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
Alien Vs. Predator Warrior Designed and folded by me
85cm painted fake Wenzhou | 48 grid | 3 days to design and 1.5 months to fold | All natural color changes and closed back | 5/8
Finally produced a somewhat-decent humanoid with an actually decent face! This design was inspired by Lex Woods in the Alien Vs Redator movie armed with Jerry-rigged weapons (chopped off parts of a dead xenomorph) and I thought it would be another nice piece to add to the theme. I wanted to make the character more warrior like instead of just a sweater and baggy pants by making the guy shirtless with color-changed details!
Designing the figure was pretty easy and only took three days. The main goal of this was to focus on the shaping (especially the face) and produce a humanoid better than most of my others combined. I think I succeeded given my experience and would definately like to design more humanoids (albeit with a lower grid since the arms got quite thick) to improve my shaping skills. I will remember this design as a nice shaping milestone to look back at within the next few years.
@dexnamkung March 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
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse