Animals

With the reverse, squash, petal and sink folds from Origami and Paper Folding 4, you can now do what origami is best known for: turn a square into a creature. The trick is not to memorise a dozen animals. It is to see that every animal is a handful of flaps, and each flap is given a job. A long flap can be a tail or a neck, a short one an ear or a foot, and a reverse fold gives it a joint. This chapter teaches that way of looking, then folds three animals: a fox, a rabbit and a jumping frog.

Flaps as Anatomy

Every base you met in Origami and Paper Folding 3 has a fixed number of flaps. Choosing an animal is mostly choosing the base whose flaps match the animal's parts. The table is a guide, not a law (diagrams vary, so check yours).

Three Moves for Giving a Flap a Job

• Shorten it. Fold the tip over or reverse-fold it, so a long flap becomes a short one. Ears and feet are made this way.
• Bend it. An inside reverse fold puts a joint in the flap. A neck gains a head, a leg gains a knee.
• Narrow it. Fold the two edges to the centre line. Thin flaps read as legs, tails and necks; wide ones read as bodies.

How Long Is a Flap?

Before folding, it helps to know roughly how long each flap will be, because the size of the square decides how much animal you get. In a frog base the points are about 0.7 times the side of the square (a simplification: your folds will shave a little off). This script plans a model with short legs half the length of the flaps:

Output when run:

A 10 cm square gives you a small animal with legs under 4 cm, which is fiddly. For a first attempt, use 15 cm or larger.

Model 1: The Fox Face

The fox is the classic first animal because it is a kite base with the flaps given jobs. Use a square with a coloured side (orange or red) face down.

1. Fold in half diagonally, coloured side outside, to make a triangle with the long edge at the top. Crease, unfold, and turn so a corner points down.
2. Fold the two side corners down so they meet at the bottom point. You now have a diamond with the fold line across the middle.
3. Make the ears. Fold the left and right top corners down at a slant, so each corner makes a small triangle. These are the ears, and the angle sets how pointed they are.
4. Make the face. Fold the bottom point up a short way, so the nose is a small triangle. Crease firmly.
5. Check the symmetry. Hold the fox up to the light. Both ears should be the same size, and the nose should sit on the centre line.

A face with only a few folds teaches an important point: small changes in the angle of one fold change the whole expression. Try making a fox with wide ears and one with narrow ones, and see which looks friendlier.

Model 2: The Rabbit

The rabbit adds a technique: the long ears are made by narrowing a flap and reverse-folding it, so the animal gets a pair of tall ears and a short body from one square.

1. Start with a fish base. Keep the two long points at the bottom and the short points at the sides.
2. Narrow the long points. Fold the edges of each to the centre line to slim them.
3. Make the ears. Bend each long point up using an inside reverse fold, so the ears stand up on either side of the head.
4. Shape the head. Fold the head's tip down with a small inside reverse fold to form the nose.
5. Make the tail. Fold the back point under or in with a small inside reverse fold.
6. Stand it up. Open the base slightly so the model stands on its flat base, and adjust the ears by eye.

Model 3: The Jumping Frog

The jumping frog is an old favourite because it does something: press the back and it hops. It is built from a rectangle rather than a square, so use a piece of paper cut or folded to roughly 2:3 (for example, 10 cm by 15 cm). Heavier paper makes a better jumper.

1. Fold the rectangle in half lengthways and unfold, to mark the centre line.
2. Fold the top corners to the centre line to make a point at the top, like a house roof.
3. Fold the sides in. Fold the left and right edges in to the centre line, then fold the point back down.
4. Make the front legs. At the top, fold the two corners out to the sides at an angle, so each makes a little leg.
5. Make the back legs. Fold the lower corners up and across, then fold them back down so they lie against the sides.
6. Make the spring. Fold the bottom edge up to the middle, then fold it back down halfway, like a concertina, so it sits as a flat Z shape.
7. Jump. Place the frog on a table and press down gently on the back, then slide your finger off quickly. The Z-fold releases and the frog hops.

Why the Same Skills Make Different Animals

Look at what the three models share. Each starts from a base, narrows some flaps, shortens others, and bends the rest with reverse folds. That small toolkit is why origami books can show hundreds of animals using only a handful of techniques. Once you can read a model as flaps with jobs, you can often see how an unfamiliar animal is folded before you open the diagram.

Challenges

Each challenge has a worked solution you can open after you have tried it.

Next, in Origami and Paper Folding 6, we move from animals to flowers and boxes: a tulip, a lily, a masu box with a lid, and a first taste of wet-folding.