Artist Juho Könkkölä creates origami knight from a single sheet of paper

I’m an origami artist from Finland and I create intricate human figures by folding paper. My main medium is just one square sheet of paper, and I fold it hundreds or thousands of times to make the figures come alive with all their detail. I don’t make any cuts on the sheet of paper, or glue any extra paper on it, it’s just folding. They take inspiration from history, mythologies, folklore, books, movies, and games, and can take several months, or even years to make.

The creation process consists of mainly two steps; designing the folds, and then folding it. In the design process I might fold it several times and reiterate the design to find out the best possible arrangement of the folds to create the figure. The design process is usually finished once I am happy with it and feel I could fold it well into the figure. The second step is to develop the paper, I have to create a special type of paper to be strong and thin enough to be able to fold it without tearing it. Then I fold it by using the plans I made in the design process.

Each year I try to make one larger project that is the most complicated origami of mine so far. The first year was the Lord of the Dragon, the second year was the Samurai, and this year was the Dueling Knights. The Dueling Knights’ folding pattern consists of 5377 folds, and folding all those is just to fold the main structure. It took me about 2,5 years to design it and 109 hours to fold it from a 95cm x 95cm square sheet of paper. The most difficult part was to find an efficient way to fold two figures from one sheet, in a way that had the illusion of them being separate figures.

But I am not stopping there, I have been working on the next major piece throughout the year, and at the moment it is roughly 4 times more complicated than the Dueling Knights, that is if I will manage to fold it. ~ @jkonkkola_origami

Dueling knights paper art by Juho Konkkola Dueling Knights