Picaruelo's origami: jazz

The time had come to face the musician I had feared the most since the beginning, the sousaphonist. It wasn't because of the dwarf, who was similar to the rest of the band but for the instrument, the sousaphone. Big, curved and with not a bit of information on how to fold it, at least that I knew. It was a challenge. Here is the end result: my sousaphonist:

The last dwarves I have folded have all had small innovations that enrich the band. This one wasn't going to be different. Using the traditional Joisel's dwarf base I have added two grafts that let me get a long moustache and squared shoes to the model. In the following pic you can see the grafts:

And the final CP, that luckily ends up being an easy 32x32 grid instead of the 28x28 one of Joisel's model:

Collapsing this dwarf is easy, very similar to the traditional dwarf. I used for my model a 62x62 cm kozo paper. We start from the CP:

Then we fold the graft inside to get the traditional CP and we collapse it as we would collapse the traditional dwarf:

The graft is visible in the hat and shoes that are square instead of pointed:

Finally, inside the face you can find two little flaps, one on each side, that properly lengthened form the moustache:

As I have already said my challenge with this model was the instrument. In the following photos you can see Joisel's sousaphonist in the Origami Museum in Zaragoza (EMOZ):

The bell is made up of ten divisions. Also, you can notice the tube starts with a lot of paper and ends with just a little. These two things led me to a simple conclusion, I had to use a long triangle. And if I wanted to be a purist it had to be symmetrical, that means it had to be isosceles. I needed to divide it in ten long stripes, each of them with 3 sides, one visible all along the tube and the other two to be released at the front part to form the bell. That was 10x3=30 divisions, If I added two more divisions I could use them to close the model.

Finally I would divide the triangle in 32ths. I got the following CP:

Let us see some pics of the collapsing process, first with the proof paper:

I use methyl cellulose and clothes pegs to close the paper

After folding the 32ths we fold the vertical lines that will be used to turn around the tube:

For the final model I used a kozo paper triangle of 24x72 cm. I painted it with deep gold acrylic:

The bends are made using curved folds and being careful not to tear the paper

We can use the dwarf to measure where the bends have to be folded:

There is a moment in which we have to keep modelling the instrument with the dwarf inside:

We make the final adjustments to the model with methyl cellulose and strings or wire as usual:

And we come out with the final model:

Finally, I added a little crane. This incredible traditional Japanese model had to be present in my music band:

After folding 8 dwarves the time had come to break the male monopoly. It was time to fold a woman, When I began this project one year ago I had a lot of doubts about the models I would finally fold. In the beginning it was easy because I only had to fold the models created and brilliantly designed by other people. With half the band folded I begun to realise I wanted to add some new elements to my band. That is how, first the flautist, and later the drummer, were born. But even so, I knew my expectations would not be completed if I didn't add a female to the band.

Today, I am very happy to present my new model a TROMBONIST, a FEMALE TROMBONIST:

The design process of this model started some months ago. During these months I created a mental image of the model I wanted to design. I identified some key elements that had to be present to give the personality I wanted for her: long hair, smooth face, big breast, thin waist and a long skirt. I had already tried all these elements in former models:

The long hair would be a mix between the crumpled violinist hair and the long hair of the drummer:

The face would be the violinist face trying to make it as smooth as possible:

The big breast and thin waist would follow the stile of my Spanish Dancer:

The long skirt would be similar to Hojyo Takashi's violinist,

or Tadashi Mori's bride:

Once I knew what I wanted to create I began with the technical part of the design. The first thing was to draw the tree diagram:

I soon realised the tree was very similar to the drummer's tree. In the drummer the breast flap is longer and folds flat on top of the body. I began to work with my drummer's CP and after some adjustments to lengthen the hair flap and shorten the breast flap I came out with my trombonist CP:

It is important to notice the bottom of the CP. The lines running down slowly fade away before the paper ends. They are the skirt. If we wanted to collapse the base and make it lie flat on a table we would need to fold them fully down. It isn't our case. We want to make a 3D skirt with as few creases on the paper as possible.

We can compare both CPs, trombonist and drummer, painting similar areas in the model with the same colours. Both of them are 32x32 grids:

The hair is pink. It measures three units in both models but in the trombonist there is a 'green' river that adds two additional units. So we have five units for the trombonist vs three for the drummer. In yellow we have the face. Four flaps the trombonist vs three for the drummer. The fourth extra flap let me fold the mouth. With the drummer I didn't fold the mouth because I could add a moustache. The neck is blue. It's longer in the drummer (3 units vs 1). The breast is red. In the drummer it is 3 units, the same length as the body so that is can fold on top of it. The arms are grey. They are 10 units long in both models. The fingers are similar.

For the final model I have used kozo paper, a 45x45 cm square. The final height of the model is 20,5 cm. Let us see the folding process:

Back view

Front view

Notice how I fold the skirt, trying not to make extra creases, specially at the bottom. My advise is to let the paper fold itself as you advance on the closing of the model.

Collapsed model

We can put a paper ball inside the breast to help with the modelling of this part:

The skirt bottom can be folded inward to adjust the model height. At the same time this fold helps to close the model:

Then, we model the face:

And finally, we reach the detailed modelling. It is surprisingly easy compared to other dwarves. It also closes on itself very nicely without need of much wet folding with methyl cellulose. It is probably the music that has taken me less time to model.

This model, once folded, is like a noble woman in court, a MILADY, and so that is how I have named her before adding any music instrument so than she becomes the ninth member of my music band:

The woman took me long working hours but folding the instrument was very straightforward. The trombone CP was deduced and released in his flickr by Ricardo Montecinos: