Papercraft Quetzal

I decided to create a new object for my papercraft project. My design is the national bird of Guatemala the Quetzal. I chose this animal because my father is from Guatemala and he passed away when I was younger. I try to implement this bird into my life as often as I can because it makes me feel closer to him. 

Therefore I began my design, the focal points of this animal are the long wings and body. I realized right away that the best way to design this bird will be with the polygons. I noticed that I struggled really hard to create the neck and body to connect to the wings cohesively.

As you can see from my initial design I struggled a lot with getting a curved form and therefore the prototype did not turn out and it struggled a lot. There were too many crossing polygons and the prototype ended up with holes in it because I wasn't careful when creating my object. Also, the form was way to boxy for my liking so back to the drawing board!

I wanted a new design now that I realized how it should fold I decided to create the design by lining up the polygons to avoid any cross over or redundant lines.

The final body form was a lot closer to what I was looking for.

Finally Completed the prototype. I redrew the bird about 10 times because I couldn't get the shapes to stop curving. Finally, I figured it out! they don't say less is more for no reason. I only made half for my prototype as it is completely symmetrical.