Slow Learners

[fncll]

I'm curious how quickly other people have built up their origami skills. I'm a newbie and I don't have extensive time to fold, so I know my progress will be a lot slower than those who have much more time to spend. But then I see people here saying things like "I'm new to origami. I can fold Kamiya's ancient dragon but not his ryu zin," and I'm thinking "whaaaaat?" Am I origamically challenged since I am still struggling with some models from Genuine Origami and the like (and I'm not just talking about the final Demon model)?

I consider the Ancient Dragon to be a pretty complex model. I'm not obsessed with complexity or anything--it's actually far down on my list of important qualities, though I admire it greatly in others' folding--but I'm starting to feel like even more a child among adults.

[camicazi]

It may have to do where you put the bars for yourself.I have the bar really high, and I have made quiet a fast learning progress. Mostly because that I have always folded too hard models, but never gave up until it went well. As an example, my 2nd book I bought was kamyas book. I directly tried the ancient dragon and did not fold anything else until I finaly finished it. I guess it took about 8-12 tries.

[topsu]

Though not the most effective, your method is better in a way: you probably won't have to live trough the ever-lasting crumbled-tissue-foil age if you ever decide to move to more complex models. The "I'm 9 and I've done the ancient dragon" stuff is all right but it becomes hard for the complex-loving kids to try and seek for other things once they've gotten the technical part somewhat down.
My learning curve was similar to camicazi's. I just kept making harder models than I was able to and thus made quite fast progress. The ancient dragon hype wasn't as big back then though

[phillipcurl]

any person that is 9 and claims they made the ancient dragon is completely and entirely full of it, unless they can provide photo proof, and even if they can, its most likely made out of tissue foil and looks like crap.

I learned by persistence. trying over and over and over until i got it right. if i got even one fold off by a millimeter, i'd throw it away and start again. another thing to improve your folding accuracy is to make a simple modle (like a crane) a bunch of times. learning to fold cp (something i'm still working on) also helps in learning how origami works so you can fold better.

[Argonaut]

Don't worry about your progress at all. It took me about 8 years to fold a crease pattern and I have yet to fold an ancient dragon. If you take it slow and develop your folding skills over time it will probably end better than trying to fold stuff outside your abilities. If you''re always trying to fold stuff too difficult for you, you will probably get frustrated and burned out. Remember that life is a marathon, not a sprint, and that starting like a prodigy will not guarantee success later.

Like another post said, folding a model over and over is good. You will become incredibly faster and increase your accuracy dramatically. You will be far better off to fold a wide array of simpler origami then move to more complex stuff once you've got it down, not before.

[phillipcurl]

hell, i still fold simple models all the time even though i can fold super complex models.

they are fun, don't take much time, and some look good. besides, kami paper is readily available and easy to work with. the more you fold, the better your accuracy gets. today, after maybe 12 years of folding, i just collapsed my first CP. and it was a simple one, at that. and it had a diagram attached to it, with to ways:
cp to get directly to step 9 or do like 9 steps to get to step 9. i chose cp

but anyway back to point. i've been folding for nearly 12 years now and i still can't fold a cp for my life (i am working on it though, getting better day by day i think i can actually do box pleating ones easy now) and i have just started doing complex origami 5 years ago, and super complex just this year.
so you could say i'm a slow learner in some aspects and a fast in other, but i can't really judge because origami has never been much more of a hobby to me until the past few years. As another person said, slow is actually better than fast. in the end, you will be better.