The Origami Forum

Hi there!
I folded so many models in childchood and it seems that time has come to recall this beautiful hobby

I need your advice with choice of one impressive-looking dragon model. I plan to give it my Japan-fascinated friend as a gift and I really would like to make it awesome. I have two months and I'm prepared for excercise, blood and pain.

So, I would need to choose one nice-looking dragon, but I need to be sure that it is possible to make . A necessary condition: it should be rather traditional model folded from one square. And altough I am ready for a hard model, it would be nice if it weren't very-super-extra-hard.

Also I have a problem with fact that it's really hard to buy nice big-sized origami paper. Probably I will end up with some kind of wrapping paper (unless you convince me that it's a bad idea). Please take it into account.

Thank you in advance.

You might want to fold the darkness dragon by tadashimori he made an entire tutorial on youtube. If you haven't folded for a long time it might be easier to follow the video instead of diagrams.

I have a dragon model that's not overly complex.
http://baltorigamist.deviantart.com/art ... -277246654
Maybe I can make photodiagrams.

Two of my freely available favorite ones:

Joseph Wu's Estern Dragon is very nice and doable (but from a rectangle)
www.josephwu.com/Files/PDF/edragon.pdf‎

Kade Chan's Fiery Dragon might be a tiny bit too hard
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZaODTEvXXM
(description also has links to diagrams)

Im not sure if this is very complex or not to you but there is satoshi kamiya's ancient dragon. It consists of 273 steps and can be found in satoshi kamiya's book, Works of Satoshi Kamiya. Its not near as hard as his ryujin 3.5 or 2.1. This model needs thin crisp creasing paper like thai unryu treated with mc or kraft paper. the paper and book can be found in Nicholas Terry's Origami Shop.

Lol you guys are all recommending complex dragons.

Robert Neale's dragon is a very nice mid level model.

Shuki Kati's "simple" dragon is more complex, but also mid level and doable. Both will turn out okay with regular origami paper.

Oh hehe. I didn't think that was what she meant.

here an intermediate dragon I tried a few years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3UAAYek ... yVm5LZqcYw and here's another : http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-dragon.html and if you subscribe to this newsletter, http://www.origami-fun.com/origami-dragon.html, you get a free E-book with a really cool dragon I used to make a lot. These will all turn out well with regular origami paper, which is called kami paper, for future reference.

+1 for Neale's Dragon

Robert J. Lang's KNL Dragon (a sort of evolution of the Neale's one)
Jeremy Shafer's Dragon
they both have tutorials on youtube

Wow, you guys are amazing! Thank you for all the suggestions!

ETMOrigami wrote:here an intermediate dragon I tried a few years ago: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3UAAYek ... yVm5LZqcYw and here's another : http://www.origami-instructions.com/origami-dragon.html and if you subscribe to this newsletter, http://www.origami-fun.com/origami-dragon.html, you get a free E-book with a really cool dragon I used to make a lot. These will all turn out well with regular origami paper, which is called kami paper, for future reference.

- Jeremy Shafer's Dragon
- Robert Lang KNL Dragon
- Neale's Dragon

These are nice, but a bit too simple. Don't misunderstand this "mid-complex" and "doable" At present I am folding models from "Works of Satoshi Kamiya" and doing pretty well. And anyway I'm going to improve and do my best for this dragon

- Joseph Wu's Estern Dragon
Is unacceptable for me since it's made from rectangle.

- Kade Chan's Fiery Dragon
- Satoshi Kamiya's Ancient Dragon
These are the ones I am interested in for now.

Baltorigamist wrote:I have a dragon model that's not overly complex.
http://baltorigamist.deviantart.com/art ... -277246654
Maybe I can make photodiagrams.

Your dragon is really nice, but will you do these diagrams? I see you've been planning this since March, so forgive me being a little skeptic about that.

I haven't tried Kade Chan's Fiery Dragon yet, but I highly recommend a big sheet of very thin paper for the Ancient Dragon...
I tried a few days ago with a 30x30 cm standard kami, and I've had to stop halfway because my origami had become an unfoldable chunk of highly compressed paper

I folded ancient dragon with plates on it belly from 20x20 cm 60 g/m2 standard paper and it was OK for folding. But it did not look like a dragon I suggest at least 50x50 cm, bigger is better.

Joanna wrote:

Baltorigamist wrote:I have a dragon model that's not overly complex.
http://baltorigamist.deviantart.com/art ... -277246654
Maybe I can make photodiagrams.

Your dragon is really nice, but will you do these diagrams? I see you've been planning this since March, so forgive me being a little skeptic about that.

I only make diagrams as the need arises. My original reason to diagram this became null, so that's why I haven't diagrammed this yet. If you want me to, I'll be happy to fold this again. (:
I'll warn you that you need to be very comfortable with sinks and unsinks to fold this, which hopefully you are if you're folding Kamiya's models.

@Baltorigamist
Well, it would be very nice of you. I'm not sure if this dragon will be my final choice, but anyway I'd love to fold it (and apparently I am not the only one).

@all
Yes, I'm going to use some big sheets. Would you recommend a paper to exercise more complicated models? I've done some research and it seems that for me the easiest to buy is kraft, wrapping paper (ca. 70 cm wide) and 60g "decoupage paper" (only A4 and A3).

Also I am waiting for some new suggestion, just to be sure I've not skip some interesting models

Another Dragon which is quite impressive is shuki katos western dragon. He himself calls this model super-complex, suggests a sheet of at least 50cm and at least 7 hours to fold. I dont know how complex you are willing to fold but i wanted to suggest it as you say you have some experience. Minus for this one is, that shuki had posted a mediafire link with free diagrams made and uploaded by him on his flickr, but i cant find it anymore. His simple dragon (diagrams here) might be also worth a try but i guess it is too easy.

Yeah, I've seen this dragon, it looks amazing and awfully complex Third one on my list!

(I haven't had any problems with finding diagrams, they are linked on Shuki Katos' DA: http://origami-artist-galen.deviantart. ... -280201255 )