Origami Antler Helmet

Made for Pacific Coast Origami Conference 2023 banquet event. We were encouraged to wear origami themed Halloween attribute. This is based on a traditional samurai helmet model, with strip graft along diagonal to extend the "horn" and to fold out some branches.

Design

My idea is to make wearable item on the head, like hat, glasses, or head band. As always it has to be made from single square, and I want it to have more "origami feel" than sculpted item or paper craft full of cuts & glue. I drafted some designs for color changed cat-eye glasses, crane themed hat, or even Neale dragon hat.

Then I realized, why invent new hat model if we can modify existing traditional model? It reminded me of samurai helmet model which I learned back in kindergarten.

What could be made interesting here? How about longer appendage to make horns? With branches it would look like deer antler, producing headdress like what is worn by revenant in God of War game. It is easy to add strip graft along the diagonal, to add more paper for horns.

The graft size was chosen arbitrarily

Stronger origami feel is achieved by using 22.5 degree for the horn branches, without too many sink in and out. Easiest way to start is to expose a square area in the horn tips, and fill it with some 22.5 molecules to create branches. I free folded randomly and got a working prototype.

This has potential. I wanted the horn to branch more, so I did some free folding again.

It was hard to decide which should I use. The earlier one has cleaner look, but the horn branches awkwardly with the lowest branch being too long. The last version has more branch but it may look excessive. After few days of looking into the model, I decided to use the last version.

When designing wearables, we have to include the practicality of folding and scalability of the model. How big is the required paper? How thick? Will it be able to hold its own weight? Or will it collapse flimsily?

I measured my head, and I think having the hat with 40 cm width should fit. The model's efficiency is \(\frac{1}{4}\sqrt{2}  \approx 0.35\). With 120 cm paper I can make the hat with 42.4 cm. A thicker material like kraft paper might work. There is only one way to find out...

The hat's width is \(AC\).
We know that \(AB\) is \(\frac{1}{4}\), so \(AC\) is \(\frac{1}{4}\sqrt{2}\).

Fold

I bought a 70 cm x 12 m roll of kraft paper for mail packaging. It is probably 100 gsm, even thicker than printer paper. To make 120 cm square, I have to connect two sheets of 70 cm x 120 cm. This is easily done with glue. No need to worry about the seam as that part would be buried inside the model.

Gluing the huge kraft.

Cutting the paper into square is also challenge. My equipment is too small to cut paper that big. In the end I folded the large square into waterbomb, mark some lines with ruler, and cut with scissors. Slight inaccuracy is fine for large paper.

This would be my first time folding such a large paper. It is unexpectedly difficult to find reference accurately. It got easier once the model was partially collapsed and shrunk. I also reinforced some internal parts with high stress by sticking small patches of extra kraft paper so it doesn't tear over time. The shaping is finished with water.

As expected the size fit my head, and fortunately the model was able to hold its own weight.