Intro

Origami is the art of folding paper without making cuts or using fastening devices such as tape. Typically one starts with a polygonal shaped piece of paper (usually a square or rectangle). Origami can be done with papers, foils, or cloths. Sometimes it is done with wet paper, which when hardened and painted gives models that look like sculptures.

Below are some models I've made. Most of them are my first attempts. Some are nice. Some are crappy.

Starfish (a.k.a. Sea Star)

Difficulty: ☆☆
Paper: square with orange on one side
This is one of my favorite models because it has 5 points. Most origami has even-fold symmetry. Creating a π/5 radian angle is not trivial. Also, the final step involves lots of twisting and squishing. It's more like sculpting than folding.

Ray

Difficulty: ☆
Paper: square with purple on one side

Killer Whale (a.k.a. Orca)

Difficulty: ☆☆☆
Paper: square with black on one side

Sea Turtle

Difficulty: ☆☆☆
Paper: square with green on one side

Seahorse

Difficulty: ☆☆
Paper: square with pink/blue pattern on one side
The asymmetry of the pattern on the paper makes the sides of the sea horse complementary.

Penguin

Difficulty: ☆☆☆
Paper: square with black on one side.

Sperm

Difficulty: ☆
Paper: square
This is by far the least obscene model in a “Naughty Origami” book that I have.

Manatee

Difficulty: ☆☆☆
Paper: square with pattern on one side

Stellated Icosahedron

Difficulty: ☆ , Time: ☆☆☆☆
Paper: 30 squares
Each piece is folded into an identical trapezoidal unit and then the units are assembled. This polyhedron has 60 faces total. Because it uses more than one piece of paper, this is considered modular or unit origami.

Fish

Difficulty: ☆☆☆
Paper: square with pattern on one side

Dolphin

Difficulty: ☆☆
Paper: square with blue on one side
The original design left the tail as a point. I made a cut with scissors to create the tail flippers. So, technically this is Kirigami not Origami. This one is fully 3-D, so it looks a lot better in person.

Crab

Difficulty: ☆☆
Paper: square with red on one side
When I tell people about the simplest things I know how to make they always say “ooh ooh, can you show me how to make a crab?” The problem is that the crab requires the paper to be cut in 4 places, and scissors aren't always handy. Because of the cuts, this is technically Kirigami, not Origami. This came from a spider model that I modified.

Humming Bird

Difficulty: ☆☆☆
Paper: square with one color on each side

Apatosaurus (a.k.a. Brontosaurus)

Difficulty: ☆☆
Paper: square with one color on each side (purple & green)

Unicorn

Difficulty: ☆☆☆
Paper: 2 squares and 1 triangle, each colored yellow on one side
Technically this is modular origami because it uses three pieces of paper. If you saw the movie Bladerunner, you're familiar with this origami unicorn as being the calling card of one of the bad guys.

Dragon

Difficulty: ☆☆☆
Paper: square with one color on each side (red & blue)

Butterfly

Difficulty: ☆☆
Paper: square colored yellow on one side

Catterpillar

Difficulty: ☆☆☆☆☆
Paper: square with one color on each side (orange & purple)
This was so difficult (or at least the instructions were so bad) that I never finished it. Notice that it has no face. It's also only 3/8 as long as it should be. What you're looking at required almost 100 folds. The full size model, including the face, would require about 300 folds.