Football

Well, after a long time I worked on some modular origami - the origami football (soccerball). Absence really does make the heart grow fonder, cos I absolutely loved making the football. It helped that it very closely resembles a real football, so much so that my daughter wanted to kick it around! And everyone in my house is in love with it 😊

Unlike most modular origami, the individual modules are made from equilateral triangles. For my football, I had used A5 sheets (If you have A4 ie., the regular copy paper, cut it in half horizontally to give 2 A5 sheet). Each A5 sheet gives 2 white triangles and 3 black triangles. A total of 20 white pieces and 12 black pieces are needed. So that makes it 10 white A5 sheets and 4 black A5 sheets (In A4 terms, it is 5 white and 2 black A4 sheets).

The white and black pieces are folded differently, as we need white hexagons and black pentagons. While assembling the ball, each black pentagon will be surrounded by 6 white hexagons. You should be aware that of these 6 white hexagons, one side will have a pocket which will be empty. That is because of the combination of hexagons and pentagons and nothing to worry about :)

So give it a go and have fun with the football. It is pretty robust, so you can even throw it around a bit!

Unfortunately I am no longer able to find the diagram for this model. It used to be hosted on Mark Leonard's site but it is no longer available. But all is not lost! I have linked below a youtube tutorial for making said football.

Model Details:

Model: Football

Creator: Mark Leonard

Difficulty Level: High Intermediate

Paper Ratio: Triangle

Paper Size: A4 and A5 paper

Model Size: ~4 inches in diameter

Modules: 32

Tutorial: Youtube