The making of an origami Koi

By Guido Trombetta on 2:51 PM , ,
Koi varieties
A pond of Origami Koi

As you may have read in the second part of this special post about Origami, the traditional Japanese art of paper folding whose goal is to create a representation of something (often an animal) using geometric folds and crease patterns without the use of gluing or cutting the paper, and using only one piece of paper, one of the favourite subjects of the Origamist ate the Koi. Well you may now ask what is a Koi...
Well, while Koi in japanese simply means "Carp" in the rest of the world this word identify those ornamental carps you've probably already seen in a pond. This fishes are just domesticated varieties of the common carp Cyprinus carpio selected by humans for their beautiful spots of colors. The correct Japanese way to call them is nishikigoi (錦鯉) (literally "brocaded carp") and, being Japanese people really precise guys, they've given a specific name to each possible color variety as you can see in the following table (click on it to enlarge it):

Koi varieties

Going back to the Origami art, there are many ways to create a Koi Origami, my favourite one is the One Dollar Koi you've seen in the previous post, in general it's not an easy subject however if you wan to try the following video is a step by step tutorial!

The first steps seems so easy but then almost at the end it becomes a mess... but this is very common with Origami (at least for me!)



This is the third part of a triple post about Origami. If you've enjoyed it you might enjoy the other two as well: