Origami Tessellations

[EricGjerde]

I'm a little bit of an origami tessellation nut, but I guess it's always good to have some focus!

my website is: http://www.origamitessellations.com, which is an origami blog, which allows people to see any updates I make to either my diagram list or anything of any interest that I find in the origami tessellation "world".

and, last but not least, I upload a bunch of photos to http://www.flickr.com, which is a fabulous photo sharing site. My Flickr Photostream is accessible at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/origomi/.

Several of the origami tessellation fans on Flickr post items to a photo pool, at http://www.flickr.com/groups/origamitessellations/.

Thanks for letting me share these with you, and I appreciate any feedback you might have!

-Eric Gjerde

[EricGjerde]

OK, so I moved all of my content to www.origamitessellations.com, and shut down my old blog.

I'm much happier integrating all the items I have together- it's not all perfect, but honestly who has the time to do all that fiddling around? not me, anyway. something is better than nothing in my opinion!

I do encourage my fellow origami fanatics to consider using flickr for image hosting- it's not just about a place to store photos, but it's all about the community and interaction that it creates. there's a nice group of origami people there, and it's a good feeling to be able to give and receive positive and constructive feedback on each other's new work.

[chapbell]

I will second that idea.

Flickr is not only a fun community, but it's far more international than I would have guessed. While diagrams and CPs are a means of communication which transcends language barriers, photographs are even more so. About half of the traffic coming to my site from Flickr is from non-English speaking countries.

Wilkommen, bienvenue, c'mon in.

[EricGjerde]

While I still get a large chunk of US (or .net/.com/.org - they don't always overlap!) visitors, a significantly large chunk of the "real" traffic is all from overseas. lots of Brasil/Chile/Argentina, a lot of Europe, and random SE Asian countries. It's interesting seeing who visits and looks at things!

I think the impressive part of all this, and what it really brings home to me is the fact that origami really is an international community. It's certainly a niche thing, so the interest fits any like-minded person. Diagrams that don't require language understanding (how many of us have folded something from Japanese books or magazines?) help to bridge that gap.

Furthermore, I found personally that making an attempt to reach out to a large segment of my visitors (Brasilians!) by translating my PDF documents and web content into Portuguese really helped to create some wonderful bonds with new friends in that country. My translation is horrible, but I found that many helpful people would write to me helping me to fix the translation errors or find better ways to phrase things. This was invaluable, and certainly was done out of the goodness of their heart. That meant a lot to me, so I try to give back to them whenever I am able to. I never would have known about Origami Brasil, or all the very nice people in that nation who love origami, if I hadn't taken the time to try to make things more accessible.

lastly- it's very good to use keywords or phrases in other languages for things you might have photos or diagrams of; besides calling something an "origami star" (50+% of my google search phrases lately) you might also consider "estrela", which is star in portuguese and spanish. and besides "origami" you might also think of things like "papiroflexia", which means paperfolding in those languages too (as far as I know!). Plus, it sounds cool, and who doesn't like audibly appealing words?

[Harpseal]

Well that's a long reply!! I'm just looking for quick, easy to download non-illegal (obviously) origami tessellation photo diagrams and/or normal diagrams (in english, which is the main language in black holes) to basic tessallations. Are there such things or aren't I looking in the right place?

[EricGjerde]

Origami tessellations are really hard to diagram - the primary method of sharing is either via photos or through crease patterns.

The thing is, once you've put in some time folding tessellations, directions aren't that necessary anymore. it becomes pretty easy to figure out how people made their designs by just looking at them. I think this is one of the biggest reasons you don't see a lot of diagrams.

Second reason is that making diagrams for tessellations is HARD I have yet to even try, because frankly a CP and photo diagrams seem like the best idea to me, and doing that much tedious work with a vector art program wouldn't be worth it.

[Harpseal]

How about free and easy captioned photo diagrams then? Or maybe a video?

Are there any photo diagrams then? Or how about a video? I am after my first tessellation to make and to be honest, i haven't had much luck.

[EricGjerde]

Sara Adams has made several origami tessellations videos, I would suggest checking those out.

[Harpseal]

I will- thanks!