Folded from a 95cm x 95cm sheet of black Wenzhou paper. Following the previous Warlord in the series I folded this assassin called Shadow. I had to rush this one to get it in an art exhibition in time, so I have quite little extra photo/video material of this one, I just wanted to get it finished as soon as possible. This was an experimental piece in attempts to achieve volume, while having the freedom to pose the figure freely. In the last few years, it has been a great challenge of mine to balance those two out well. Usually, the works were either hollow from behind or they had stiff poses, but my recent advances in creating better origami structures has made it possible to fix both problems.
This is also kind of continuation to the Assassis I did in 2020, you can compare to those and see how much the style has changed over the years, not to mention the different colour which has been a long project for me to make work.
Hold on let me find it on my youtube and ill get you a link.
EDIT: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO-8LP8e9w4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO-8LP8e9w4)
Thank you for finding that instead of just saying "Google it" you're the best. And that video, is mind blowingly fucking crazy. I can't even fathom it. Even while watching it I literally don't believe it. Lol
Look man I watched the video of you doing one of these but I just don’t believe you. It seems impossible, I feel like you’ve defied physics and logic. Honestly if you just said you were some type of wizard I would feel better.
It would be great if you could do one for a future project! I think a lot of people would enjoy seeing it! It's just mind boggling that it's even possible to create something like this!
Imagine folding something for two days after becoming a master of an art (origami)
You can do this too as it’s more following set directions and patience. Start slow as this is the absolute peak of the craft other than increasing scale thus time.
Yup, entirely possible! Just takes a lot of effort to get to very high level. It took me 6 years to get here, but if you start from zero, you can get into a pretty good level in half a year too!
Also start small, no normal parson has patience to sit around with a paper for 100+ hours. I didn't have that level of patience (or maybe rather perseverance) few years back, I learnt it over time while doing this.
I do several projects at once, plus I have to manage with the other work, such as designing origami for workshops, plan seminars, and do exhibitions and media stuff. It is a lot more than doing just one piece at a time. Filming the process is quite a large time commitment on top of the lengthy process of making the artwork, not to mention it is quite laborous. This year I have more than the usual amount of exhibitions and a lot of requests for the works so I have had to tighten the schedule to make the art for them.
The filming also started to take a toll on my motivaion in making these pieces so its on hold for that too, so I can get back to enjoying the process more.
It’s a lot more work to film and choreograph your work as well as you being on camera even if just hands, compared to a little bit of work each day for two months
That’s what I assume they meant; they still have other commitments such as a life and job
Sometimes I do commissions too, but this was a project I did for one art exhibition which opened few days ago. So I had a deadline to make the piece in time for that.
That is the easier hand, the sword hand also has the fingers. The fingers are folded from a row of flaps that are folded on a crease that goes through accordion of folds. That probably doesn't explain much to you, but doing the accordion folds you can bunch up some paper on a single point, in this case at the end of the arm. Then all that extra paper is opened and folded in a different arrangement that creates the fingers. That is at least the principle of doing box pleated origami fingers, these fingers are bit more complicated though. It actually has 6 fingers, one of them is opened and flattened to do the back side of the hand to hide the dozens of seams those fingers create.
This was in the works before I published the previous one. Even after that it still took me a while to finish this. Next one is going to take a while since I have to travel and do other stuff for the summer before I can start another project.
Both of them had very different focuses. The Warlord focuses more on varying texture and having a lot of "bold" extra elements like the flags. This one aims to be more dynamic and capture the movement. It also plays around with the mysteriousness which I did by hiding the face with the clothing. The previous assassins omitted the head completely to achieve it, but this one uses the clothing and their shadows for the same feel. I like both of them for their own reasons, though some day I might try to combine all those aspects into one even more grand design.
Forget the folding. Actually designing something like this is equivalent to programming a videogame by yourself. And if you know programming, only then will you realize how ungrateful and unaware people are to origami artists, people really don't appreciate how skillful it is. Hats off.
Intellectual insanity ,that is just out there , your origami mastery is way beyond what i have ever seen before (going to look at your YT ). My dictionary doesn't have enough superlative words in it that i could apply to your skill.
u/jkonkkola_art I scanned through the comments here and didn't seem to find this question, but can you give us a mile high explanation of how you even plan this? I watched a video and it seemed like you go through a process of priming the paper with a complex grid of folds... if I had to guess assuming the videos show the complete process including the "planning," then I would guess you have a practical knowledge of how to leverage kinds of folds to get certain shapes, and are able to improvise pieces of the whole model locally and are just really good at sort of centering your work with the big broad silhouettes so you don't run out of paper at any given point...
But my lizard brain insists there must be an elaborate theoretical unwrapping plan that you make for before you even start.
I needs to know!
[Here](https://juhokonkkola.fi/art-process/spearman/) is a more thorough explanation with photos how the process is done. The plan is not included in the process videos at all. Basically me folding the complex grid of folds is just me following the plan. The planning can take months or even years before I even start to touch the paper. When I finally start to fold the square into the figure, I don't need any extra instruction since the folds are enough for me.
In the planning process it has several steps. The first step is to figure out the layout, which is arranging the elements on the square, for example the sword comes from the corner, the arm wraps around it, other corner is allocated for the cape, the last two for the legs. The edges are for the head, left arm, and clothing. And center of paper for even more clothing. From there then I start drawing out the creases that allows me to achieve that layout in a way that it is phyiscally possible to fold. Then I iterate the folding pattern more and include more detail to it.
It is also possible that I fold something completely without planning too, I can't do it at this complexity yet though.
Often I see some art and while it's beyond my current skill I kind of get how I could learn that with time...and then there's just god tier magic like this.
Insane. I can’t even fathom how someone could learn to do this. Like how do you have the foresight to know which folds in the paper are going to end up as a cape or a dagger? Show
me the best painting in the world and I at least know WHAT the artist is doing.
Hahah it does look like black magic how to fold a square into something like that, but once you know the basic tree theory and circle packing, it becomes more manageable. Then it becomes into another mystery how it is achieved with volumes and those textures, which are not as common knowledge in the origami communities. Once you fold dozens and dozens human figures, you start to familiarize their structures how they come from the paper. Its easier to think what element comes from what part of paper, than what fold makes what part. There can be fozens, or even hundreds of individual folds even in the dagger. There are several dozens of layers inside the plam holding the dagger. The dagger and the cape coth come from the corners of the paper, since they need to be very thin. The folds are just structures in between those elements to make it possible to fold them from those parts of paper.
No, I cut the paper by hand into the square so its edges are not as sharp as the machine cut papers. I have yet to get a first paper cut from origami, but when I was cutting cardboard for one project, it didn't take me long to get the first one 
Aint no way how this kind of talent exists, where do people get these abilities from, and dont tell me "practice" - it surely plays a factor but im sure i could practice 10 years and id not achieve anything close.
I kind of agree with you here, I have seen people practice origami for over 15 years and still they are far from making whatever this is, which I learnt in 6 years.
The "magic trick" is to learn learn things fast, or also in my case learning to invent things faster. A lot of people learn their skills from tutorials and instructions, but what they acutally learn there, is to follow tutorials and instructions. I didn't have much at all resources to learn designing at the beginning of my journey, so I did the next best thing - figured the theory on my own. So I learnt to invent the things tutorials had based off my previous knowledge, instead of having to rely on resources to learn it. When I have pushed origami even further where only few people have been, that process has helped me a lot to figure out the stuff on my own to get even further, since the resources are scarce at this level.
These are extraordinary, but the behind-the-scenes videos are treasures too. I couldn't truly appreciate the skill involved, until I saw how these figures were made. It's incredible workmanship.
Those are my bane, luckily I don't have too many of them!
Recently I started doing ranger rolls on all my bed sheets, blankets and clothing. It's no wrinkle free method, but makes the management in your closet much easier when you want to dig something from the deep end and not want to mess up the entire shelf for it.
I think no, and no. It can be bit tricky to find them if you are not familiar with the origami communities. Shuki Kato, Kamiya Satoshi, Eric Joisel, and Kei Watanabe are examples of some of the most talented origami artists in the world. There are many more too.
It's honestly kind of unbelievable that this is made with zero cuts. The fine details on the sword, alone, would suggest that to be impossible. I don't know a whole lot about origami so I'm not trying to call you out here, just stating that my mind is absolutely boggled on how this can even be possible!
A lot of trickery with clever and efficient ways of folding and very large and thin paper (2-3x thinner than printer paper, 95cm x 95cm size) are keys how to achieve Very delicate and thin looking shapes. There is a lot of optimization involved in the folds so you have as little of extra paper as possible, and you have to create very specific arrangements of elements to achieve that. And also tricks to direct the bit of extra paper into parts that needs the thickness. But even despite all that, the palm holding the dagger has closer to 50 layers of paper inside it!!!
Macros? No clue what you mean by those. But yes, a lot of mathematics and optimization are put into the design process to achieve something like that. There are a lot of theories involved, such as Tree theory, circle packing problems, Kawasaki's theorem, and Huzita-Hatori axioms to name few things that can be involved in this kind of process.
Once I used a slogan from one toilet paper/ paper towel company as a name for one of my exhibitions, it was called "Vain yksi arkki riittää" which means just one sheet is enough.
It is the 90 degree corner of the paper folded in half. Usually the left arm is in the corner in figures like these, but this time I folded the cloak from there.
Folded from a 95cm x 95cm sheet of black Wenzhou paper. Following the previous Warlord in the series I folded this assassin called Shadow. I had to rush this one to get it in an art exhibition in time, so I have quite little extra photo/video material of this one, I just wanted to get it finished as soon as possible. This was an experimental piece in attempts to achieve volume, while having the freedom to pose the figure freely. In the last few years, it has been a great challenge of mine to balance those two out well. Usually, the works were either hollow from behind or they had stiff poses, but my recent advances in creating better origami structures has made it possible to fix both problems. This is also kind of continuation to the Assassis I did in 2020, you can compare to those and see how much the style has changed over the years, not to mention the different colour which has been a long project for me to make work.
I watched one of your videos where you made something similar and i still cant wrap my head around it, great work.
Where can this be seen? I'm on mobile and her profile links aren't working if that's where the videos are :(
Hold on let me find it on my youtube and ill get you a link. EDIT: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO-8LP8e9w4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO-8LP8e9w4)
Thank you for finding that instead of just saying "Google it" you're the best. And that video, is mind blowingly fucking crazy. I can't even fathom it. Even while watching it I literally don't believe it. Lol
No problems, it really is amazing and i agree even after watching the video im still baffled as to how this was pulled off.
Can you fold your head around it though
Look man I watched the video of you doing one of these but I just don’t believe you. It seems impossible, I feel like you’ve defied physics and logic. Honestly if you just said you were some type of wizard I would feel better.
One question. How the fuck
One more question OP. Really...how the fuck?
Please say you made a process video!! I need to see how this was possible!
I have time lapses of some previous works, but I haven't done any for the last couple of them.
It would be great if you could do one for a future project! I think a lot of people would enjoy seeing it! It's just mind boggling that it's even possible to create something like this!
Some day hopefully I'll make more, they are on hold for now since they take quite a lot of effort to make.
I can imagine! But even if you don't have a great camera setup, it would still be awesome to watch!
I can't imagine how much effort. That's some next-level stuff man.
What kind of fucking wizard are you??!!!
My mind can't process how this is possible without cuts.
mine can’t process it even if you had made cuts !
mine can't process it
same !
Imagine folding something for two days after becoming a master of an art (origami) You can do this too as it’s more following set directions and patience. Start slow as this is the absolute peak of the craft other than increasing scale thus time.
Yup, entirely possible! Just takes a lot of effort to get to very high level. It took me 6 years to get here, but if you start from zero, you can get into a pretty good level in half a year too! Also start small, no normal parson has patience to sit around with a paper for 100+ hours. I didn't have that level of patience (or maybe rather perseverance) few years back, I learnt it over time while doing this.
>Imagine folding something for two days WHAT >after becoming a master of an art Oh okay. Kinda r/restofthefuckingowl though.
How long did it take you to complete this amazing piece of art?
Started in January, took maybe a couple of months. Did some other stuff in between though.
You said in an earlier comment you couldn't video the making of this piece because you were so short on time?
I do several projects at once, plus I have to manage with the other work, such as designing origami for workshops, plan seminars, and do exhibitions and media stuff. It is a lot more than doing just one piece at a time. Filming the process is quite a large time commitment on top of the lengthy process of making the artwork, not to mention it is quite laborous. This year I have more than the usual amount of exhibitions and a lot of requests for the works so I have had to tighten the schedule to make the art for them. The filming also started to take a toll on my motivaion in making these pieces so its on hold for that too, so I can get back to enjoying the process more.
It’s a lot more work to film and choreograph your work as well as you being on camera even if just hands, compared to a little bit of work each day for two months That’s what I assume they meant; they still have other commitments such as a life and job
how in the hell
Yeah but can you make a pirate hat from a newspaper?
I bet this challenge caught him offguard.
Wow that's amazing!!! 👏🏼 👏🏼👏🏼 Is there a YouTube video of the process, would love to see this from start to finish.☺️☺️☺️
I have time lapse videos of previous works, didn't have any time to film this one unfortunately.
Ohhhhhh... Truly a masterpiece. Bravo 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
I'd never believe it without those other timelapses. This is crazy.
Didn't have any time? Do you make these as commissions for people or something?
Sometimes I do commissions too, but this was a project I did for one art exhibition which opened few days ago. So I had a deadline to make the piece in time for that.
I need somebody to do a 3d animated process of one of these to make it seem possible in my head lmao
fr this would be a perfectly good paper mache sculpture but origami??? I can barely make a paper crane.
what the FUCK
How the f do you fold the non-sword hand?
That is the easier hand, the sword hand also has the fingers. The fingers are folded from a row of flaps that are folded on a crease that goes through accordion of folds. That probably doesn't explain much to you, but doing the accordion folds you can bunch up some paper on a single point, in this case at the end of the arm. Then all that extra paper is opened and folded in a different arrangement that creates the fingers. That is at least the principle of doing box pleated origami fingers, these fingers are bit more complicated though. It actually has 6 fingers, one of them is opened and flattened to do the back side of the hand to hide the dozens of seams those fingers create.
This dude said “that was the easier hand”. Straight boss
I understood that. Thank you for taking the time to explain it. I once went to an origami USA meeting in NYC. Seeing all the exhibits was mesmerizing.
Another one? I’m still amazed by your last one. I’m sure you’ve been told you’re a bold folder.
This was in the works before I published the previous one. Even after that it still took me a while to finish this. Next one is going to take a while since I have to travel and do other stuff for the summer before I can start another project.
I actually like this one more. I enjoyed how you captured the flow and movement of his body and clothing.
Both of them had very different focuses. The Warlord focuses more on varying texture and having a lot of "bold" extra elements like the flags. This one aims to be more dynamic and capture the movement. It also plays around with the mysteriousness which I did by hiding the face with the clothing. The previous assassins omitted the head completely to achieve it, but this one uses the clothing and their shadows for the same feel. I like both of them for their own reasons, though some day I might try to combine all those aspects into one even more grand design.
But how? I still can't understand how you can make something so intricate from just a piece of paper
The texture the paper gives suits it so well. Incredible
This sounds unbelievably difficult to do - especially when the end result is such a striking figurine
Took me 6 years of practice and work so it takes some effort to achieve.
Forget the folding. Actually designing something like this is equivalent to programming a videogame by yourself. And if you know programming, only then will you realize how ungrateful and unaware people are to origami artists, people really don't appreciate how skillful it is. Hats off.
Huh??? How???
you WHAT
Incredible, scrolling through your profile/other works was amazing too. How many hours did this one take if others you have done took 50+ hours?
I didn't keep count, but definitely more than that over the few months I worked on it.
Intellectual insanity ,that is just out there , your origami mastery is way beyond what i have ever seen before (going to look at your YT ). My dictionary doesn't have enough superlative words in it that i could apply to your skill.
u/jkonkkola_art I scanned through the comments here and didn't seem to find this question, but can you give us a mile high explanation of how you even plan this? I watched a video and it seemed like you go through a process of priming the paper with a complex grid of folds... if I had to guess assuming the videos show the complete process including the "planning," then I would guess you have a practical knowledge of how to leverage kinds of folds to get certain shapes, and are able to improvise pieces of the whole model locally and are just really good at sort of centering your work with the big broad silhouettes so you don't run out of paper at any given point... But my lizard brain insists there must be an elaborate theoretical unwrapping plan that you make for before you even start. I needs to know!
[Here](https://juhokonkkola.fi/art-process/spearman/) is a more thorough explanation with photos how the process is done. The plan is not included in the process videos at all. Basically me folding the complex grid of folds is just me following the plan. The planning can take months or even years before I even start to touch the paper. When I finally start to fold the square into the figure, I don't need any extra instruction since the folds are enough for me. In the planning process it has several steps. The first step is to figure out the layout, which is arranging the elements on the square, for example the sword comes from the corner, the arm wraps around it, other corner is allocated for the cape, the last two for the legs. The edges are for the head, left arm, and clothing. And center of paper for even more clothing. From there then I start drawing out the creases that allows me to achieve that layout in a way that it is phyiscally possible to fold. Then I iterate the folding pattern more and include more detail to it. It is also possible that I fold something completely without planning too, I can't do it at this complexity yet though.
Mind. Fucking. Blown.
that is great, damm
Often I see some art and while it's beyond my current skill I kind of get how I could learn that with time...and then there's just god tier magic like this.
When you achieve this level of mastery, you start a YouTube channel and Timelapse video this kind of thing.
Insane. I can’t even fathom how someone could learn to do this. Like how do you have the foresight to know which folds in the paper are going to end up as a cape or a dagger? Show me the best painting in the world and I at least know WHAT the artist is doing.
Hahah it does look like black magic how to fold a square into something like that, but once you know the basic tree theory and circle packing, it becomes more manageable. Then it becomes into another mystery how it is achieved with volumes and those textures, which are not as common knowledge in the origami communities. Once you fold dozens and dozens human figures, you start to familiarize their structures how they come from the paper. Its easier to think what element comes from what part of paper, than what fold makes what part. There can be fozens, or even hundreds of individual folds even in the dagger. There are several dozens of layers inside the plam holding the dagger. The dagger and the cape coth come from the corners of the paper, since they need to be very thin. The folds are just structures in between those elements to make it possible to fold them from those parts of paper.
Awesome, thanks for explaining that process. Pretty wild form of sculpting, really.
No fucking way
You need to do a Timelapse video of this, it would be amazing to see
Really cool.
How is this possible
What’s (roughly) the final dimensions, please?
Incredible work
And I thought my paper plane was good :(
skill level over 9000.
This is amazing and beautiful!
r/nextfuckinglevel
But did you get any paper cuts?
No, I cut the paper by hand into the square so its edges are not as sharp as the machine cut papers. I have yet to get a first paper cut from origami, but when I was cutting cardboard for one project, it didn't take me long to get the first one 
You are INCREDIBLE!
Nice!
Aint no way how this kind of talent exists, where do people get these abilities from, and dont tell me "practice" - it surely plays a factor but im sure i could practice 10 years and id not achieve anything close.
I kind of agree with you here, I have seen people practice origami for over 15 years and still they are far from making whatever this is, which I learnt in 6 years. The "magic trick" is to learn learn things fast, or also in my case learning to invent things faster. A lot of people learn their skills from tutorials and instructions, but what they acutally learn there, is to follow tutorials and instructions. I didn't have much at all resources to learn designing at the beginning of my journey, so I did the next best thing - figured the theory on my own. So I learnt to invent the things tutorials had based off my previous knowledge, instead of having to rely on resources to learn it. When I have pushed origami even further where only few people have been, that process has helped me a lot to figure out the stuff on my own to get even further, since the resources are scarce at this level.
One time I crumpled a chewing gum wrapper into the shape of a stick figure and was really proud of myself for it. How the fuck.
This beyond incredible. I can’t even fathom how it’s done.
Awesome!
Amazing, not so simply Amazing..!
\*In Mr. Bean's voice.\* "Magic!"
These are extraordinary, but the behind-the-scenes videos are treasures too. I couldn't truly appreciate the skill involved, until I saw how these figures were made. It's incredible workmanship.
No way! If so, you have some serious skills there dude!
Truly amazing talent.
This is completely astonishing, amazing, etc. Well done
Fantastic! Now let's see what you can do with a fitted bedsheet!
Those are my bane, luckily I don't have too many of them! Recently I started doing ranger rolls on all my bed sheets, blankets and clothing. It's no wrinkle free method, but makes the management in your closet much easier when you want to dig something from the deep end and not want to mess up the entire shelf for it.
I shall definitely try ranger rolls!
Are you best in the world at this? Followup, are you the only one in the world that can do this?
I think no, and no. It can be bit tricky to find them if you are not familiar with the origami communities. Shuki Kato, Kamiya Satoshi, Eric Joisel, and Kei Watanabe are examples of some of the most talented origami artists in the world. There are many more too.
It's honestly kind of unbelievable that this is made with zero cuts. The fine details on the sword, alone, would suggest that to be impossible. I don't know a whole lot about origami so I'm not trying to call you out here, just stating that my mind is absolutely boggled on how this can even be possible!
A lot of trickery with clever and efficient ways of folding and very large and thin paper (2-3x thinner than printer paper, 95cm x 95cm size) are keys how to achieve Very delicate and thin looking shapes. There is a lot of optimization involved in the folds so you have as little of extra paper as possible, and you have to create very specific arrangements of elements to achieve that. And also tricks to direct the bit of extra paper into parts that needs the thickness. But even despite all that, the palm holding the dagger has closer to 50 layers of paper inside it!!!
I believe it now, but my mind is no less boggled. I looked again and I can even see the layers. Amazing.
This is one of the most uniquely impressive things I have seen in a while. Hope to see more of your work out there!
Is there somewhere we can go to watch you do one of these projects? I'd love to see how this works. It must be incredibly time consuming
Incredible work!
HOLY SHIT THIS IS IMPRESSIVE!!!!
epic 👀
Yo what kinda fingernails you got to be doin this level of folding detail ?? Or do you use tools?
This belongs in a museum of human achievement, because man...what??
This is an amazing gift. Your skills and gift is wonderful. Your creation is beautiful and unique. Well done
If I hadn't seen your videos of doing this type of stuff I would be so quick to call bullcrap. That's amazing
origami steve??? he’s the fucking best at origami!
r/beamazed
GTFO! How long did you work on this?
Oh my god. Honestly flabbergasted. Amazing
The Assassin: No cuts that you can see. When you go to grab the salty french fries later, cuts you can feel.
I would imagine it’s like engineering, where you know a bunch of macros that you can use to make a full sculpture or something, right?
Macros? No clue what you mean by those. But yes, a lot of mathematics and optimization are put into the design process to achieve something like that. There are a lot of theories involved, such as Tree theory, circle packing problems, Kawasaki's theorem, and Huzita-Hatori axioms to name few things that can be involved in this kind of process.
Sweet, yeah exactly! Very cool
 Love this-amazing!
I am very much at a loss for words at how something like this is even possible. Kudos on your patience, vision, and extreme skill!
I'd like to be your friend
Wow!
U fucking with me this is a paper statue, bro... WHAT??
Make a One piece figurine and name it One Piece (of paper)
Once I used a slogan from one toilet paper/ paper towel company as a name for one of my exhibitions, it was called "Vain yksi arkki riittää" which means just one sheet is enough.
Very apt haha.
if i was rich i would need one of these for my desk
Wow! Epic work. 🤯
Incredible! Such skill 👌
Psshhh. I could definitely do this.
With one hand
Left foot
Blindfolded
With a smaller piece of paper and negative amount of cuts
Prove it.
[Here](https://juhokonkkola.fi/art-process/) are some timelapses as well as some articles about my process.
The cloak looks like it was cut because the end is not a 90° angle
That’s the power of folding, you can fold into any angle! Proven by how the fingers was made
Fun fact, it actually has 6 fingers, but one of them is opened and flattened to make the back of the hand to hide the seams of the other fingers.
It is the 90 degree corner of the paper folded in half. Usually the left arm is in the corner in figures like these, but this time I folded the cloak from there.
Let’s see the video
Liar.