Thread by @origamiPete, Many of you wanted to see text-based threads from me and I [...]

Many of you wanted to see text-based threads from me and I hear you.
I know it took a while but now a really exciting opportunity presented itself to me to work on a brand new design as my first paid commission.
This is perfect time to walk you through my creative process:
(1/x) https://twitter.com/origamiPete/status/1300348361225179138

https://twitter.com/origamiPete/status/1300348361225179138

I have wanted to talk about this topic for a while now. A little disclaimer before we dive in, this is my approach and it's only applicable to figurative origami. There is a whole universe of abstract origami which I have merely dipped my tiptoes into on a few occasions.
(2/x)

Disclaimer part two, there are many approaches to figurative origami, I feel like every origamist has their method and their preferred ways of doing things and they are all equally valid. What you're going to see next is not the best way of doing things, it's just my way.
(3/x)

What presents a constant challenge in designing any origami figure is that every new origami model is a packaging challenge.
You've got to package all the details of the model you want to make in a square (most commonly) region of paper.
I'm going to tell you how.
(4/x)

What you're going to see me talk a lot about in this thread is flaps and rivers.
Flaps are any flappy bits on an origami model, legs, tails, wings, antennae, mandibles, etc, rivers are the spaces between them.
The two digits of a crab's claw would be considered flaps,...
(5/x)

...and a river would be the length of the crab's 'arm' - the distance between the ouchy bits and the crab's body.
Flaps and rivers together form what's called a stick-figure, the most simplified representation of any subject you might want to make an origami model of.
(6/x)

Here is what a basic stick figure for an origami crab would look like.
4 flaps for the claws, 8 flaps for the legs, 2 rivers for the 'arms.'
The central 'knot' or 'node' is where the body would be.
Next I'm going to talk about how individual flaps work in greater detail.
(7/x)

A flap is defined by its length, determined by its tip and its base, at which it can be flipped and flopped in whichever direction is necessary, hence flap. There is only one 2D shape defined by a constant distance from a single point - a circle.
(8/x)

This is really important to know, because half of the success in creating a new origami model lies in fitting the right number of circles of the correct radii within a square region of paper.
This method is called circle/river packing.
(9/x)

A lot of what I do when working on a new origami model consists of combing through Google images to find good reference pictures, and taking measurements, to figure out the radii and the number of circles necessary to reproduce the particular animal at hand.
(10/x)

The area of paper taken up by a single flap can be represented by a circle for the sake of simplicity, but the entire area of the circle doesn't need to lie within the square boundary of the paper. Most flaps tend to be on the edge of the paper, or in the corner.
(11/x)

Edge flaps only take up a half circle region of paper, corner flaps only take up a quarter circle area of paper.
This is really important to keep in mind, because space within a square comes at a premium in origami, and you don't want to waste any of it if at all possible.
(12/x)

Here is a schematic comparison between an interior flap, an edge flap and a corner flap.
The longer a flap needs to be, the more desirable it is to place it in the corner of the square or at least on the edge, in order to free up space for other features of the model.
(13/x)

Some features, such as antennae of insects and crustaceans, tend to be very thin and dainty.
That's why it's really unfortunate if a model is designed with antennae as interior flaps such as my mantis shrimp below. Compare it with my stag beetle with corner flap antennae:
(14/x)

I want to backtrack to the crab stick figure from a few tweets ago. Here I have split the center node in two by another river separating the left half from the right, giving some width to the body. This is not commonly done, but I think it's going to work well here.
(15/x)

Tomorrow I'm going to dive into how to transform a stick figure into a folded origami model. I'm going to use this crab as my test subject, because it's just complex enough to feature both flaps and rivers.
I don't want to turn the difficulty up to 11 immediately.
(16/x)

Here is a schematic drawing of how to fold a square to get a narrow stripe in the middle. The vertical folds marked in magenta are reference folds for the model. All future folds are going to be inferred from the position of these two folds.
(17/x)

The center strip of paper marks the 'river' which determines the width of the body. You can see four circles packed tightly together on either side, representing the legs. The two top corners are free for the claws to be added in the next step.
(18/x)

Here is the finished circle-river packing for the crab demonstration model. In the next step I'm going to start drawing in the folds. First I'm going to connect the center points of the circles and their tangent points.
(19/x)

Now I'm going to fill in diagonal folds, connecting the center points of the circles to the grid intersections in the negative spaces between them.
Then I'm going to further subdivide the angles in each flap to make the flaps narrower.
(20/x)

This is the finished crease pattern for the crab with the fill colors removed for better clarity.
I'm going to retrace the same steps of drawing the folds in when folding, starting with the reference folds, then adding the rest, but more on that tomorrow.
(21/x)

Now that we have a new project ready to be folded, let's take a look at how to make tissue/foil paper at home.
Supplies:
Tissue paper
Glue stick
Aluminium foil
Scissors

Other origamists might cringe at using glue sticks instead of methyl cellulose, but this is how I do.
(22/x)

Make sure to apply glue to the foil, not the paper. This prevents big wrinkles/ripping, because foil is more resilient to pressure/dragging force than this thin kind of paper. First apply glue just to the free edge of the foil so you can align it on the paper properly.
(23/x)

You see the foil aligned and folded over "wrong" side up, that's where more glue gets applied to glue down the next section. This time I'm making a small sheet, so I want to stop gluing the foil down when I get to roughly half way down the sheet, then I cut the foil off.
(24/x)

I fold the paper in half, then fold the starting corner of the paper towards the fold.
Then I fold the paper at a right angle to the first fold to roughly mark out the size of the final square.
I cut it out and try peeling off the excess foil off the leftover paper.
(25/x)

Here you can see the cutting and peeling in progress.
When I'm not busy taking pictures, I can usually manage to peel the excess foil off much more successfully, but this time the glue had long enough to set. Hence I left a small piece of it on to prevent ripping.
(26/x)

You can see I have cut a square of tissue paper the same size as my square from the leftover of the sheet, this is how I try not wasting materials. This is a small square, so I can afford to apply glue to the entirety of the foil side of my square.
(27/x)

Now I need to move quickly.
I flip the prepared square of paper upside down to hide any remaining pieces of peeled of foil on the inside of the paper, align it on one edge, making sure the corners match, and place it down, then gently press out any bubbles or wrinkles.
(28/x)

I have a small rear on one of the edges, so I cut a small triangle just big enough to patch it and glue it in place.
Now all that's left is trimming the paper into a precise square so I can start folding.
(29/x)

*Tear. Sorry about the typo.
I don't have a paper cutter, so I've had to devise a way of cross-checking the accuracy of my scissor cutting. More on that tomorrow.
Today was another busy day, so I only had time to speed through the process of gluing the paper together.
(30/x)

First I trim off any extraneous pieces of foil that stick out past the paper edges.
This is double tissue/foil with a sheet of paper glued to either side of the foil, so I need to turn the paper over and check on the underside too.
Then I check for squareness by folding.
(31/x)

I fold the paper in half diagonally, then fold the resulting triangle in half again, then bring the side corners towards the bottom corner. Here I trim whichever corner looks longer, in case the corners don't match up.
Then I bring the two corners up to the top corner.
(32/x)

Now I check the side corners, if all the folds meet up at a single point, it means the midpoint of the edges of the square is in the right position. That's usually good enough to see whether the paper is even enough for folding.
(33/x)

I then go through the same process once again, starting with the other diagonal to cross-check.
If all seems within 1 mm of what it should be, the paper is ready for folding.
I had to learn to trim a bit less than what seems right.
It's better than cutting off too much.
(34/x)

Here is the construction of the reference folds for this model followed by an image of most of the key folds highlighted in marker on the 'wrong' side of the paper for better clarity. I often do this on certain models as well, it helps me see the major folds better.
(35/x)

Starting to collapse the base. It's not much yet but it's looking crabby already.
Next step is to make all the flaps in the base thinner. This is going to involve a lot of moving layers around to get to things, so I'm going to make collages of the next bit to save space.
(36/x)

This is the process of thinning out all the flaps in order to complete the base. Now the folded shape matches the crease pattern 1:1. There is still going to be a lot of shaping needed before the model actually looks like a crab, but more on that later.
(37/x)

This is a speedthrough of the shaping process. The crab is finished. I think it looks ok. I needed to have a go at a simpler model like this now, I was feeling rusty after not having folded anything for a while.
The Trigonotarbid is going to be next on my list.

(38/x)

This is a speedthrough of the shaping process. The crab is finished. I think it looks ok. I needed to have a go at a simpler model like this now, I was feeling rusty after not having folded anything for a while.The Trigonotarbid is going to be next on my list. (38/x)

I realized after the fact that the model is going to look much cleaner if I flip the base bottom side up before doing any of the shaping folds.
Here is the updated result.
I swear the next post is going to be Trigonotarbid-related (finally, I know

).
(39/x)

I realized after the fact that the model is going to look much cleaner if I flip the base bottom side up before doing any of the shaping folds.Here is the updated result.I swear the next post is going to be Trigonotarbid-related (finally, I know ).(39/x)

Finally some Trigonotarbid progress for my commission work for @FossilLocator.
I'm making an origami model of Pleophrynus for him.

Here are rough circle packings that are worth considering.
Labels: R - Rostrum, A - Abdomen, P - Pedipalp, L - leg.
(40/x)

Finally some Trigonotarbid progress for my commission work for @FossilLocator.I'm making an origami model of Pleophrynus for him. Here are rough circle packings that are worth considering.Labels: R - Rostrum, A - Abdomen, P - Pedipalp, L - leg.(40/x)

I've included this first one for demonstration purposes only.
It is the most efficient way of packing 8 flaps of equal length within a square region of paper, but it doesn't leave much space of any other features of the model, which makes it ideal for a harvestman instead.
(41/x)

This second one is more promising,but the abdomen flap feels a bit too short in comparison with the legs and the flap layout is asymmetrical. This makes the concept itself more interesting, but it would mean that the underside of the model would not look even.
(42/x)

This leaves me with these two basic layouts to work with. Both are symmetrical from side to side and both leave enough space on the inside for the interior flaps.
I have made models based on similar layouts already, a tarantula and a camel spider.
(43/x)

If you were to connect the tips (centers) of the outside flaps in the first circle packing, the lines would form an octagon, so I could switch the orientation of the paper from book symmetry to diagonal symmetry without affecting the structure of the model in any way.
(44/x)

I would like to have more to show for myself today, but this is how far I got.
I decided to go with diagonal symmetry, because it felt most promising.
A satisfyingly symmetrical layout wasn't possible in the end, because the 4th pair of legs is longer than the rest.
(45/x)

This is by no means final, I still need/want to try and move things around to find a better fit for the flaps. The complex structure of the abdomen meant I had to go with a grid-based structure in the end, because that's what I'm mot familiar with for this sort of thing.
(46(/x)

Origami Trigonotarbid progress.
I may have stayed up until 2AM working on it, but at least it feels very close to done.
There is still one more thing I want to play around with in the rostrum (R)/chelicerae (Ch) area, but besides that, I'm happy with how things fit here.
(47/x)

I have increased the length of leg pair 3 by one unit to split the difference between leg pairs 2 and 4 and added a river between leg pairs 2 and 3 in an attempt to spread the single knot of flaps I would have ended up with otherwise over a larger area for a better fit.
(48/x)

Here are the stick figures I've been working off of.
The big one would require a 128*128 grid, which felt unnecessary, so I resized it to 50% with a goal of making the model fit a friendlier 64*64 grid instead.
You can see all the flaps straightened out on the bottom here.
(49/x)

These are two slight variations on the same theme, in the first one the flaps for chelicerae (Ch) ended up being longer than the rostrum (R). This didn't make much sense to me, they weren't visible in the reference pic, so the alternative layout has a longer rostrum.
(50/x)

Here is the finished crease pattern for the Trigonotarbid Pleophrynus.
I'm really happy with the result, although it really took a while to get there. All I need to do now is prepare some paper and fold along the lines.
It should be done by the end of the next week.
(51/x)

Progress on the Trigonotarbid has been slow, but there has been some progress.
I decided to go with brown, I know it may be basic or safe, but what's cool about it is that this is going to be a 26 inch square.
I love folding from large sheets.
(52/x)

This is why I try to never dispose of leftover pieces of foil. This scrap piece is going to fit right here. If I didn't keep pieces like this, I'd have to use up a full width of a roll of foil on this, and I'd be left with another leftover anyway.
(53/x)

All glued up, ready for final trimming.
Can you believe this took one full glue stick and 2 hours of time?
This is how you know it's a big project you're working on.

(54/x)

All glued up, ready for final trimming.Can you believe this took one full glue stick and 2 hours of time? This is how you know it's a big project you're working on. (54/x)

It may not look like it but this is a lot of progress.
A lot of hours went into this, the grid is all precreased and I'm ready to finally start collapsing the base.
(55/x)

Daily progress report.
It's slowly coming together.
I didn't get nearly as much done as I hoped because of unforseen shenanigans.
This paper keeps... I want to say tearing but that's not the right word. It's more like cracking. I keep having to patch up holes as I go.
(56/x)

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