Origami Ryujin -

Satoshi Kamiya began designing dragons as a teenager. The Ryujin series evolved through several iterations (1.0, 2.0, 3.0) before culminating in the 3.5 version. Unlike Western dragons, the Ryujin (Dragon God) is characterized by an elongated, serpentine body covered entirely in scales. Prior to Kamiya, no origami artist had successfully rendered hundreds of individual scales without cutting or gluing.

The defining feature of the Ryujin is its dorsal and ventral scales. From a topological perspective, the paper is a continuous surface (genus 0: a disk). To create scales, Kamiya employs a . Each scale is an isosceles right triangle of paper that is folded to stand perpendicular to the body’s spine. origami ryujin