The Origami Forum

Hello Everyone,

I’m once again on the quest to find a origami model to fold. This time I’m looking for a tatsu, a Japanese Eastern dragon. All I’ve seen are cps and I’ve only found one diagram of a tatsu (link below) and I wonder if there are any more out there. Could someone please help me? Online would be preferable (though if there’s an awesome, detailed one in a book I wouldn’t mind buying it as long as it’s not out of print), and difficulty doesn’t matter (however, please no cps).

Thank you in advance!

Link to a tatsu diagram:
http://www.fishgoth.com/origami/diagrams/tatsu.pdf

Link to a picture of a tatsu (no diagram or cp)
http://www.fishgoth.com/origami/gallery/fantasy3.html

EDIT: oh, and I’ve folded the eastern dragon (by Joseph Wu) and the Chukaryu so please don’t link those (though they are wonderful dragons nonetheless)

There's always John Montroll's dragon from his Mythological/Chinese Zodiac book.
And Jun Maekawa's from Genuine Origami.

Gilad's gallery of dragons might be some help, although most seem to be Western dragons.

Mauro Pucci has free online diagrams here. Finished model can be seen here. The head looks a little small compared to the body, but maybe that's just me.

Also, Fumiaki Kawahata's dragon head (the first one on Gilad's gallery) is a really nice model, but the diagrams aren't free, and it's only the head.
You might be able to come up with some way of making a body for it, though, although the back of the neck is open, so it might be tricky...

There's always John Montroll's dragon from his Mythological/Chinese Zodiac book. And Jun Maekawa's from Genuine Origami.

Right, I've folded those too... (sorry, maybe I should have listed all the eastern ones I've made...this is what I get from an over-obsession over dragon diagrams)

I've never seen Mauro Pucci's one before, I'll try it out. (THANKS! ) As for the small head, I think I could modify that, so no problems

It would stop people from suggesting models that you've folded already.

Also, in case you didn't figure it out, there's a little Union Flag (British flag) in the top left of the page which will give English translations of the instructions.

The model looks nice, but I just think the body is quite thick in relation to the size of the head (and legs). I'd be interested to see how you "fix" it.

It would stop people from suggesting models that you've folded already.

Good point. Er, other than the ones I listed, I've folded the Kadechan dragon, the Dragon in Flight, the Little dragon, the Tatsu (from fishgoth), the rearing dragon, Orme's dragon, 3 headed dragon and a few others from books I don't recall at the moment.

As for fixing the head to body ratio, perhaps I could (instead of sinking the "neck" in step 5) adjust it to something that would attach all around where the head meets the body? I'm not sure but I'm going to have to fold it first. Don't expect any pictures though, my ancient camera died a while ago.

Sorry about that.

EDIT: Whoops! Sorry I posted western dragons too (didn't realize).
EDIT2: Oh, and if anyone has a tatsu to post, please go ahead!

hope this helps

this guy is amazing

http://flickriver.com/photos/origami-ar ... 037798977/

polistes wrote:hope this helps

this guy is amazing

http://flickriver.com/photos/origami-ar ... 037798977/

I'm not denying that Shuki is amazing, but he doesn't have any Eastern-style dragons of his own (at least none that are on his Flickr stream).
There are some photos of his excellent Ryuzin folds, and some Western dragons by various artists, but certainly no instructions or CPs for an Eastern-style dragon.

Falcifer, maybe he was talking about the Ryujin (did I spell that right? or is it Ryu Zin?), since it's an eastern dragon and all?

If you are Polistes, thanks, but I don't think my origami skills are competent enough to solve a dragon like that -sweatdrop-(since I have trouble with intermediate cps as it is).

Flame_Kurosei wrote:Falcifer, maybe he was talking about the Ryujin since it's an eastern dragon and all?

I did mention that, but I thought it was Satoshi Kamiya's Ryujin, rather than Shuki Kato's own design, so it didn't seem to make much sense to me to link to his Flickr stream (or his diagrams/CPs set) when he doesn't have any diagrams for it on there.

Flame_Kurosei wrote:did I spell that right? or is it Ryu Zin?

Both are correct.
In Japan, the "alphabet" is actually a syllabary, meaning that each character* represents one syllable. Converting characters into English is known as romaji, but since the Japanese language isn't directly compatible with the English language, certain compromises are made.
For example, the letters "L" and "R" don't really exist; the closest is something of a hybrid of the two sounds. There's also no "V" sound, so it's usually replaced with "B", as in "bideo" which is the Japanese for "video", and "terebi" which means "television" (from a shortened version).

Anyway, the syllable "ji" and "zi" are represented by the character じ, which is a modified version of the character し, which itself can be "si" or "shi".
So, in Japanese, ryuzin and ryujin are both written using the same characters. Although, to be precise, it's ryuujin, or ryūjin.
It also doesn't help that there are a few different standards which are used when Romanizing characters, but the most widely used would translate it as ryūjin.
I notice, too, that Satoshi Kamiya has it listed as "Ryuzin" in the menu, but "Ryujin" under the image on the model's page. I'm sure that helps alleviate any confusion!

*There are 3 different character sets; katakana, hiragana and kanji. The first two are used for syllables (in different contexts) and kanji are used for "words".
e.g. ryūjin = ryu-u-ji-n = りゅうじん (hiragana) = 龍神 (kanji)
Since there are thousands of kanji, the hiragana are sometimes written above the kanji characters to help people read it (known as furigana).

Wow Falcifer, that's cool! I'm glad you cleared that up (I've always been confused about how Asian languages get "romanized". I mean, just because I can speak it doesn't mean I can write it in english!). Who knew that a search about eastern dragons could give me a language lesson too?

As for why polistes posted the link, perhaps we should wait until polistes replies back. (it might save some confusion that way)

Oh and if anyone has any Eastern dragons, go ahead and post!