Origami Water Boatmen

Small bug you can find swimming on dirty pool. I frequently find them on natural body of water during summer hikes. They are obviously named after their oar-like legs, used for paddling.

Design

I was studying Ivan's crease pattern for 30 degree model. Thirty degree has interesting property that it is able to easily and compactly pack three equal length flaps, which is something I have forgotten all these years focusing on 22.5 degree.

Left: 30 degree.
Right: 22.5 degree.

It is useful for insect model whose abdomen is folded out of middle flap. We can put flaps in the bottom and sides. In the end we got a hexagon-like structure.

There is an excess paper in the bottom. It can be used to lengthen the bottom legs. That made me realize we can fold this into an insect with long and somewhat flattened rear legs. Enter water boatmen.

This bug is quite simple. No noticeable antennae or large wings to fold. Its frontmost legs are much shorter than the others. It does have big compound eyes though. I just need to rework the top part of the crease pattern to fold out the front legs and eyes. I used a straightforward adaptation of common 22.5 molecule into 15 degree.

Similar molecules represented with 22.5 degree (left) and 30 degree (right).

What's left was just test fold. I want this model to be simple and can be folded out of 15 cm paper. I tried to make the abdomen less boring by making interesting folded wings, but none succeeded.

Fold

As planned I used 15 cm of common origami paper (kami).

Comments

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