Rocky the Yellowjacket

(University of Rochester's Mascot)

Designed	Oct 2013
Crease Pattern	Yes
Diagrams	No
Inspiration

Rocky the Yellowjacket is the mascot for the University of Rochester. Designing this model was an exercise to move away from the box-pleating design techniques that I had grown dependent on and practice using 22.5-degree angles with more color-change techniques. For me, box-pleating is more intuitive to apply, but 22.5-degree angle designs enable more efficient paper usage and more straightforward folding sequences.

The paper was prepared by gluing one sheet of yellow and one sheet of blue mulberry paper to form one double-colored sheet. The model took me three months to design and several hours to fold, including shaping. For this model, I put a great deal of thought into using the paper efficiently and expressing the distinguishing features of Rocky: large eyes, a firm jaw, two large wings, striped abdomen, antennas, sharp mouth, broad chest, and bulky arms. Though it's not evident in the pictures, each fist has five fingers in the final model.

I used folding techniques to flip the paper at the appropriate locations to make each feature the correct color, e.g., blue arms and eyes, yellow face and chest, etc. The design phase involved placing features that were different colors (e.g., eyes and face) on the edge of the paper and features that were the same color (e.g., face and chest) next to each other near the center. I'm happy with how the head came out, especially since that was the part of the design I struggled with most. However, I wish I had allocated enough paper to the arms to make the fists bigger.

I later refolded this model in July 2015, using a 12-inch square sheet of yellow/blue duo kami paper with minimal shaping and no fingers.