Doctor Octopus

Use a really large, thin sheet of tissue foil. 5 September 2004

1. Start with the coloured 2. Fold and unfold. 3. Fold and unfold.
side up. Fold and unfold.

4. Fold and unfold. 5. Repeat steps 1-4 6. In the next few steps,
on the other three sides. not all the crease lines
will be shown.

7. Mountain fold along 8. Valley fold along the 9. Repeat steps 7-8 until
the outermost crease line. next set of creases. you run out of precrease
Pull out the corners. lines.

10. Turn the model over. 11. Valley fold. 12. The next few steps
will focus on the vertex.
13. Unfold the pleats at 14. Refold the pleats, 15. Open sink along the
the top. incorporating the squash angle bisectors of the top
folds shown above. layer.

16. Repeat the previous 17. Repeat steps 12-16 on 18. The tentacles
step on the rest of the the bottom, and 13-16 on will in general not lie flat,
layers. the right. so move them out of the
way when the need arises.

19. The next two steps 20. Wrap a single 21. Fold the tentacle to
focuses on a single layer around. the left.
tentacle.

22. Repeat steps 20-21 23. For clarity, the tentacles

will not be shown in the 24. Fold and unfold
on the other three tentacles. along the angle bisectors.
next several steps.
 25. Fold the flap down. 26. Swing the flap to 27. Repeat steps 25-26
the right. on the bottom.

90

28. Rotate the model 29. The next few steps 30. Fold and unfold.
counterclockwise. involve splitting the bottom
point to form the feet.

31. Valley fold. 32. Pull out paper. 33. Squash fold the 34. Pull out paper.
flap to the left.

36. Valley fold. The 37. Intermediate 3-d 38. Valley fold. 39. Rabbit ear.
flap will not lie flat. step. Open out the
flap and flatten.

40. Reverse folds. 41. Reverse folds. 42. Reverse folds. 43. The feet are
done for now.
 44. Valley fold 45. Turn the model 46. Fold and 47. Valley fold
the arms. over. unfold. (no landmarks).

48. Fold over to 49. Squash fold. 50. Valley fold 51. Fold the topmost
the left. (no landmarks). point down (the sides
will be wrapped around.

52. Reverse folds. 53. Head details. 54. Spread the 55. Mountain fold.
points.

56. Fold the points 57. Finished head. 58. Hand details. 59. Spread the
down. points.

60. Crimp. 61. Finished hand. 62. Feet details. 63. Crimp.
Repeat on the other
hand.
64. Bend the legs outwards 65. Finished feet. 66. Claw details.
and spread the feet.

67. Fold and unfold. 68. Close sink. 69. Reverse fold.

70. Reverse fold. 71. Reverse fold. 72. Reverse fold.

73. Reverse folds. 74. Finished claw. 75. Mountain fold in

Repeat on the other half (or thirds) to
three claws. narrow the tentacles.

76. Shaping: 77. Finished.

(a) Curl the tentacles and spread
the claws.
(b) Shape the arms and hands.
(c) Shape the body.
Tentacle Tentacle

head

arm arm

feet

Tentacle Tentacle
Essentially a bird base with 4 edge grafts. In principle, the length of the tentacles can be
increased indefinitely by reallocating more paper to the edge grafts, and pleating as often
as necessary to obtain the desired aspect ratio. In practice, the paper thickness becomes
the limiting factor; you can only pleat it so many times before it gets too thick to handle.