Eric Joisel : Musicians

“If one isn’t an origami folder, it’s difficult to explain the process of conception through to the finished model. The creation process is similar to a scientific method. When designing a person, one begins with the assumption that the four corners of the paper will represent each hand and foot. From that general assumption, a “crease pattern” is developed that blueprints all the folds required for the model. These crease patterns may be modified while the model takes shape. Some of my first creations, like the hedgehog, took 5-6 years to finally develop. Now, years later, the process is a little easier.

‘Origami has within it all the possibilities we associate with creative art,’ Yoshizawa-sensei once said.

I try to respect the traditional rules of origami, using only one piece of paper and never cutting. The important element for me is modeling the paper. Precreasing and collapsing a geometrical base is not a pleasurable for me. It is merely a required step to arrive at my real work: sculpting.

I have a great respect for ‘pure origami’, with flat surfaces and nice geometrical conception, but as you can feel looking at my own models, I am much more interested into models ‘looking alive’, which means for me volume, curved creases and much sculpting.

Mirroring life requires curves, not straight lines.”

“Faeries enjoy music and so do I. Because origami can be so complex and technical, perhaps it should have been possible to create every musician and his instrument from a single piece of paper. The thickness of the paper can make that too difficult. I elected to make each musician 30-cm high and his instrument from single sheets of paper so that I could focus on the attitudes and elegance of each piece. In this way, the well-conceived model can efficiently use the whole surface of the square with no useless parts.

I have always been interested in conceptualizing and realizing models containing different types of surfaces and shapes that can play with the light and give the illusion of different colors. Like a good piece of jazz, every model I create is unique and one-of-a-kind.

In the first BOJB, I used 4 different CPs to produce the different costumes. But I didn’t draw ALL these CPs. Here are two first tries to verify the proportions of the box-pleating grid (Queue-de-Pie’ et ‘Toge’.)

Collapsed forms ready for modelling and shaping.

The 8th musician is the violinist with his costume “Queue de pie”.