Domestic Shorthair Cat (Felis catus), 2018

Domestic Shorthair Cat (Felis catus), designed by me in 2018. This is only the second time I fold this model; last time it was folded with tracing paper (the thinnest paper I could find at the time), and the result wasn't really satisfactory due to the transparency of the material. Because of the recent pandemic in Taiwan, we are now in a semi-lockdown situation, and thanks to that I finally have the time to fold it again, with better paper this time. Made from a 64.5 cm ( = 43 units × 1.5 cm) square of Mahjong paper.

This was designed way before I created Box Pleating Studio, so it was done entirely by hand. (being such a non-uniaxial design, BP Studio couldn't render it yet anyway) Still, this is my most complicated design so far, and also the hardest to collapse. Its collapsing is so challenging that I guarantee that even the most experienced folder could struggle a bit. I don't mean that it takes a lot of time to do it -- it doesn't -- but that the manipulation is very difficult and atypical.

I was very ambitious when I was designing this model; not only I want it to be completely closed-back, but also I want to make it "clean" in the sense that there's absolutely no unnecessary edges on its body surface (as can be seen from the folded base in the next picture), while also create the "thigh piece" and the "shoulder piece". These requirements result in the super-complicated twist near the shoulders.

I also want to make a fully-featured head (including the whiskers), as well as toes/claws. And of course, the model must be considerably efficient. I indeed achieved all that: the layout really is remarkably efficient, if I'm allow to say that myself. However, it comes with a price that it's so efficient that the collapsing becomes ridiculously non-linear and difficult. If I could relax the efficiency a bit, the model could be a lot easier to collapse, and even though I will get unused sheet boundary as a result, I might be able to utilize those to create the belly of the model. Well, those will have to wait I guess.

I must mention that it was Shuki Kato's amazing animal designs that originally drove me into designing this model.

The layout is 43 units to a side. The head uses some half-unit creases. This is all flat-foldable except for the ears (gray area), which are deliberately made 3D. Part of the body layer is sandwiched between the front-leg layers. The neck is allocated with extra length to allow shaping into different poses.

This layout was designed using a design method of mine called "edge-river method", which is a generalization of the tree method to non-uniaxial models. A brief introduction may be found here.

See the description of each photo for more details.