Papercraft Idea Generation!

 

Out of all the articles, the one that stood out to me the most/the one that I was most excited to read about was: Wet Fold Origami Technique Gives Wavy Personality to Paper Animals by Artist Hoang Tien Quyet

I was mostly excited because the man who first coined the technique of wet folding, Akira Yoshizawa, is someone I have heard of before from his book "Japan's Greatest Origami Master" (https://www.amazon.ca/Yoshizawa-Japans-Greatest-Origami-Master/dp/4805313935) which my Grandpa owns a copy of. 

Mostly, I know the artist from this work:

Just a cute little elephant

Because my Grandpa's favourite animal is an elephant and he used to fold them using this technique for me when I was little. 

I know that historically, origami came from Japan, however, it's a huge staple for most Korean childhoods. Namely folding paper stars or cranes because of the belief that if you fold a thousand you'll have a wish granted. 

Not quite enough for a wish but enough to look aesthetic

That's why I wasn't surprised when I did more research on Hoang Tien Quyet that he also got his start in origami from his childhood. 

For a lot of Asian kids, learning to fold origami is a way to be able to create toys for yourself, so when he talked about many of his works keeping that theme in mind I was pretty happy to hear that. 

Especially when he would take concepts that most kids know from childhood and elevate them:

Imagine trying to fold a thousand of these

Also coming from his Eastern Asian roots, I wasn't surprised to see that he had (at some point) folded the entire Chinese zodiac in accordance with his own style.

My favourite was his rendition of the rat:

Although I did know right from the start that I likely didn't want to include any origami aspects of this caliber in my own paper crafting project (I could barely fold a crane as a kid, let alone anything more complicated than that), I did really like the idea of paying homage to things from my childhood using this medium. 

It made me start thinking about what aspects of my childhood I might want to include, I thought back to Hoang Tien Quyet's statement that he originally got started in this field because origami had been a way for him to create his own toys and decided that for at least one of my own concepts that this was an idea I would like to play with as well.