The Origami Forum

After looking at some of Hojyo Takashi's work http://www11.ocn.ne.jp/~origami/
and seeing some of the impressive human figures I got the idea for a design.

A Tennis player . It could probably include a person holding a tennis racket. Maybe it could use a box pleating method.

Or
A football player, it would include the person kicking a football.

These designs would most likely be pretty complex but more importantly I don't think I have ever seen a design of these subjects so it could quite an original model.

Any extra ideas or attempts on the challenge are welcome.

The spanish origamist Xavier Escanilla http://www.pajarita.org/usuarios/448/ claims he has created a tennis player but I've never seen a picture or a diagram of it.

I finally got a hold of a picture of the mentioned tennis player model. To be honest I was expecting more and I don't know why someone hadn't come with such a model before. It is just a simmetric model in which a hand is turned into a racket. It looks more like a ping pong player.

You can check a picture of it at: http://www.angelfire.com/co/cubo/tennisplayer.html

Well There is still much more space for an updated or new design.


Perhaps with a larger racket?

Steffen Gnam designed a table-tennis-couple in 1988
of course it's made from a single sheet

I made a tennisman : it's a variation of Nicolas Terry's Warrior with wings . I used the left wing for the racket, the right one for the ball.
Also it's from a symmetrical model, but I managed to have something that looks not symmetric .
The racket is not box pleated.

My tennisman

Good work
I like your tennisman more than the warrior, it looks great.

That's fantastic!

A very nice model.

The challenge has been completed but maybe someone can design another tennis player.

How easy is it to derrive from the "warrior with wings"?
Are there any diagrams for the "warrior with wings" or willthere be any for your tennis player?


I wonder of the warrior wit wings could adapted into a football player?

Well done

Cool.

<critic mode>
The one thing that bugs me about origami figures holding things is the way the arm of the figure seems to morph into the object being held. While this method uses up less paper from the flap, the resulting effect is somewhat freaky, like a cybernetic construct with grafted on tools. It's fine if you're trying to do a pirate or a street samurai, but maybe not for sportsmen.
</critic mode>

Since the the paper for the racket/ball comes from the corners, adding sufficiently large corner grafts would allow you to achieve a wide range of 'people-holding-object models'. Another bonus is that you get extra paper at the feet if you want to keep the same square ratio, so you can sculpt boots as well.

Okay, are we talking American football or soccer football? For the latter, it'll be pretty nifty if you can fold the whole polygon for the ball...

Soccer football I guess but I'd be impressed with both.

Thanks for your reaction, happy you like it

T wrote:How easy is it to derrive from the "warrior with wings"?

It's not this hard, though 2 things gave me some problem : the ball has to be rounded (difficult) and also, as the racket and the ball come from wings, the paper is hidding under the arms. A lot of thickness.

T wrote:Are there any diagrams for the "warrior with wings" or willthere be any for your tennis player?

Nicolas Terry's warrior with wings diagram is in his new book, Passion Origami. The model is a bit hard, and it has to be folded out of Foil.

About the tennisman, there is no need for me to do any diagram, it's easy to fold it.

And it's not possible to do a football player from this base, because the wings are too far from the feets. I wonder if it's possible to move the flap to the feet ...

wolf wrote:The one thing that bugs me about origami figures holding things is the way the arm of the figure seems to morph into the object being held.

I see what you mean, but I couldn't do it another way. If I had made a handle, I wouldn't have enough paper for the racket.
I don't see another way to put an objet into a human figure's hand. Do you have example of this ?

barlou wrote:I see what you mean, but I couldn't do it another way. If I had made a handle, I wouldn't have enough paper for the racket.
I don't see another way to put an objet into a human figure's hand. Do you have example of this ?

As far as I know, the two ways of adding things to hands is either (a) having a single long flap for everything, or (b) having a long flap for the object and a shorter flap for the hand, with both flaps folded together. Either way, it's a matter of making sure there's enough paper allocated for everything you want to put in. So, adding more paper to the racket would be equivalent to shortening the arms and the rest of the figure (so the scale of the final figure would be reduced significantly).

And a suggestion:

Is there enough interest here in design to spawn another sub-forum, for posting challenges and responses? Each challenge topic would have its own thread, and photos of what people come up with can be stored in one of the free photo sites but linked from here.

I think the forum format would be ideal for this, since with ordinary mail lists/groups, you don't get threading and people are generally wary of downloading attachments. Plus, Saj's forum is on par with the O-list in terms of reputation, not to mention this place sees a lot more traffic.