designed by : Tomoaki Hamanaka
date of creation : April, 2025
paper : orgami paper ( 15cm × 15cm）
This crab is designed to be folded from a single square sheet of origami paper. You’ll start by pre-creasing the paper into an 8×8 grid. There’s one step that involves 3D shaping, but overall, the folding process is relatively simple and beginner-friendly.
Design Process
The design process begins with sketching—first, a realistic crab (①), and then a simplified, more illustration-like version (②). Just like in illustration, good origami design relies on selective detail—deciding which elements to highlight and which to leave out. It’s not about reproducing every detail, but about distilling the essence of the subject. (In fact, knowing what to omit is often the most important part.)
In this crab, I chose to express key features like the red color, pincers, trapezoidal shell, and downward-folded legs. On the other hand, I intentionally left out details like the full ten legs, eyes, and the 3D texture of the shell. That’s because I wasn’t aiming for realism—I wanted to capture the cute, graphic quality of a character-like crab.
Once the direction was clear, I moved into the prototyping phase—sketching different ideas while folding test models to refine the final shape. For example, I tried a version where the pincers weren’t split in two (④), which looked cute on paper, but didn’t quite resemble a crab when folded. In the end, I settled on the version shown in ⑤.
The legs, apart from the pincers, are represented as a single flat surface. Leaving a gap between the rear legs and the pincers helped make the pincers stand out more, which gave the whole piece a more balanced and appealing look.
Tutorial Video
Crease Pattern
Here is the crease pattern for this model (the set of fold lines visible when the paper is unfolded after completing the basic pre-creasing).
Mountain folds are shown in red, and valley folds in blue.
Folding diagram
Here’s a folding diagram I created for filming a short video.
It’s just a rough sketch for my own reference, so it might be a bit hard to follow—but I find it amusing how diagrams like this somehow end up looking cute, so I thought I’d share it anyway.
