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Showing posts from March, 2019

Diamonds and X's Tessellaton

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Here's another square grid design that uses the same field of 4 x 4 squares as the previous post. This time  I folded over the corners and then  opened them up and squashed them flat. A nice pattern. It's, no doubt, been done before. Not groundbreaking, by any means. Simple concept. Interesting result. A little tedious to execute. Getting those little corners to open up and spread out isn't always easy. There are always one or two corners that just don't want to cooperate. With most tesses, you're working the paper so much that something thicker and heartier is a must. In this case though, I think that a thinner paper would've worked best. To me, it comes out looking like a field of gift wrapped presents. What does it look like to you?

Bowties Origami Tessellation

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This is an idea I had for a square grid tessellation. I don't fiddle around too much with square grids. Hexagons just intrigue me more. They're more mysterious. But I thought this was a pretty neat design. It's 4x4 squares collapsed on the grid. So you just have a grid filled with 4 pleat squares. No gaps. I used a 32 pleat grid. Then you can spread and squash the corners into 3D tirangular shapes. You can get different patterns based on which corners you squash and in which direction you fold the squashes. I used standard printer paper. Spread squashes are not easy on pulpy paper. Different paper may produce more consistent results.

Chaos Theory Origami Tessellation

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I'm really proud of this tessellation. It's complex and also unique, as far as I know. If it has been done before, I have not encountered it. I came up with it from scratch. Keeping with my study of open back hexes, that's how it began. Then I added the pointy wings around them. A partial hexagon shape emerged from the design as a way to repeat the pattern. That led me to use an elongated hexagon polygon to make the whole thing work. Think rhombus, but with flat ends on the long sides. In order to gracefully connect those polygons, an offset open back triangle twist was apparent in the preliminary design sketches. All those elements came together perfectly to create the design above. It was not hard to conceive, but it was a difficult one to execute. Everything is rather cramped and finnicky. A 48 pleat gird was required to fit full repetitions. As always, a single sheet of papper was used. Basic crease pattern sketch for those interested.

Blooming Hexagons Origami Tessellation

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This is an unusual design that I worked out. It's a variation on some other open back hex twist flower type layouts. It utilizes the bias between triangle grid pleats to alter the formation somewhat. It also has a finishing touch that folds over the edges of the resultant petals. You can forgo that last step and still have a pretty nice tessellation. I just thought it would be interesting to add that additional element. It wasn't very difficult to fold nor to map. I may have a single module somewhere which I can upload a photo of at a later date. Just used some large polygons to connect the repetitions. This was done with open back hex twists. It might be interesting to try something similar with small hex twists. A preliminary crease pattern sketch is shown.