The bottom shelf

A collection of original designs that I do like but are a bit too random to go in the main portfolio. In other words, if this were a physical display, these would be put on the bottom shelf.

There are many more designs beyond what is on this page and the portfolio--but most of them aren't much worth seeing. In the past, other origami artists and I have participated in Inktober (a new design every day for a month) or speed designing challenges (design something within 10 minutes), and only the few of the outcomes of such quantity-over-quality activities have actually led to interesting designs, and that's just how any creative process is meant to be. But here are some of them.

Tall Penguin, November 2022. ("tall" to differentiate it from earlier penguin designs)

Swan, January 2021. An elegant and shaping-heavy model, good for impressing non-folders. Tutorial

Boba, December 2021, designed and folded as a gift for a friend

Rabbit, November 2021, designed and folded as a gift for a friend

Risk, the final prompt for Inktober 2021. Opening up your heart to others is quite risky, isn't it.

Pickup truck, October 2021, an Inktober prompt "pick." Uses a 17 grid and non-flatfoldability to make it 3d.

Lemonade, October 2021, an Inktober prompt

Earworm, October 2021, an Inktober prompt. Like many 2d color change models, this was almost entirely eyeball folds (folds without geometrically defined points), so drawing an accurate crease pattern would be near impossible.

Tugboat, October 2021, an Inktober prompt

Plant's turtle hp, August 2021, designed to be an "easy" introductory hex pleated cp, but it ended up a bit more complex than I foresaw...

Girl, July 2021, a nice intro to box pleated human figures. Watch the design lesson about this here.

Bob dummy, June 2021, designed for no other reason but as a proof of concept about efficiency, tilted grid, and unaxial box pleating. Watch the video (my favorite one of the series) to see what it was all about.

Graduation cap, May 2021, designed a week before graduating from high school. I wanted to see if it would be feasible to wear a life sized origami cap to the ceremony, but as efficient as I designed it, I would have needed a square over 100cm wide, so I just wore the default cap they gave us

Karen, May 2021, when I was experimenting and figuring out how to shape faces. The goal was to be able to use them for more complex human figure designs, but while I was practicing I figured why not make something funny. This cp can be shaped into pretty much any face you want.

Camel tg, April 2021. The first attempt, on the left, had a good neck but really tiny legs. Then the second attempt, on the right, had good legs but a really tiny neck. At this point the cp was getting really annoying to fold, so I just left them in their weird proportions and moved on.

Cricket, February 2021. This model is unique for it's 15 degree structure, which is pretty uncommon, and I haven't had much success with 15 degree designs since this one.

Fish tg, February 2021. I think it turned out ok, and it's super efficient, but a bit too plain/generic in my opinion. Uses a very similar structure as the divine boar

Bison, January 2021. This was a proof of concept about tilted grid and unaxial box pleating, because this model was a "translation" of Shuki Kato's bison from a tilted grid into a normal grid.

Flutist, December 2020. I was commissioned to design this for a sheet music publisher. Would you like something commissioned? Message me at theplantpsychologist@gmail.com

One sheet gear, December 2020. This one is weird, it's an asymmetrical crease pattern for such a symmetrical object, but the challenge was to use a single sheet to make a subject that is normally modular

Brachiosaurus, December 2020. This was my second attempt at tilted grid, and folding this crease pattern taught me very well what not to do when designing on a tilted grid. Also, I learned tissue foil is very unpleasant for models like this.

Reindeer, December 2020. Another test run of the method used for the crab. I ended up scrapping the janky python program I had written, but I showed the algorithm to the creator of bp studio and he implemented it there (the import Treemaker file button)

Japanese Spider Crab, December 2020. Around this time, I had an idea about a possible way to convert circle packed crease patterns into box pleating, and to try it out I wanted something straightforward like this.

Peace Dove, November 2020, folded from a half bird half frog base. Originally an Inktober 2020 prompt, and refined.

龍神 (the japanese characters for ryujin), July 2020. This was probably the end of my color change obsession phase. In short, I realized that because perimeter increases linearly but area increases quadratically, high complexity color changed designs will end up with lots of wasted space, which is no fun.

Bruh, July 2020, the beginning of my color change obession phase (during which I dare say I got pretty good). I made a video tutorial for this model here.

T Shirt, June 2020. One of the few instances where patterned paper looks good.

Bird, June 2020. This model was designed to have a nice relaxing sequence to be suitable for a "Bob Ross" video... people seemed to enjoy the video (but I refuse to rewatch it myself, I would cringe so hard)

"Plant's plantation" vegetables, June 2020. My nickname in online origami communities is "plant," so for a certain time I thought I ought to make some vegetables. I don't know why, but I also made a tutorial for the eggplant.

Growing sprout, June 2020. An interesting action model. I also made a tutorial.

Pikmin, July 2018 (refolded in April 2020). I played a lot of the Pikmin games with my brother when we were kids, so these guys bring back the memories. They all have the same base but different shaping for the ears/eyes/hair (I later made the red one with a different structure for the nose, but not until after I finished the tutorial). The yellow and purple on the left are life size: a mere 4cm from toe to tip.

Penguin, September 2017 (refolded in March 2020).