Origami Swan (Design by Hoang Tien Quyet)

Swan (Design by Hoang Tien Quyet)

I came across this elegant swan design on the Internet the other day, from a Vietnamese Origami site which is very different and a lot more elegant than my earlier attempt at folding a swan. It is designed by Hoang Tien Quyet and was featured in the Origami Tanteidan 14th Edition, too.

The model is fairly easy to fold, however, the major portion of the effort goes into shaping the swan i.e. forming the wings and curving the neck. It takes around 15 mins to fold this model, and this time includes that spent for shaping the swan.

Paper to use:

For this particular model, I used gold foil paper which I had remaining from an earlier origami project. It measures approx 4.5 to 5 inches in size. Mr. Quyet has used the wrapping paper (gold foil based sheet) found in cigarette boxes to fold his elegant model and I daresay..it’s an ingenious idea and the result is marvelous. I will attempt to fold it using the same paper shortly, but for now, I thought this gold foil origami paper would do

How to fold this model:

The swan is folded in approx 20 steps and this includes the shpaing of the wings and the neck. The steps are really easy to follow. However, pay special attention to steps 8, 9 and 10 which are essentially the main steps for this swan. Notice that the “similar to” petal fold made in step 8 should be done, such a way that, the gold portion of the paper sticks out a bit and a “squarish” look is displayed on the swan’s back (corresponding to that fold). For step 9/10, there is a reverse fold which is quite tricky and a portion of the paper gets folded ‘inwards’ to create the neck.

Update as on 5th May 2010: The site which hosted the diagram to this model has been taken down/removed the diagram. I will update this post when I get a new link to the diagram.

Now, to find someone who is willing to ‘donate’ the inner wrapper of their cigarette pack to me…