We love the artistry of paper mechanisms. Simple tools and techniques creating humor, beauty, and amazement.
[Federico Tobon] from [Wolfcat Workshop] makes amazing automata, crosses between cut paper art, origami, and traditional carved wood automata. He’s put out a useful new video on making linkages in paper parts.
In this short video, [Federico] shows us how to make a paper version of the leg mechanism for [Theo Jansen]’s classic Strandbeest, which we’ve covered in many variations.
Rotating joints in paper automata are sometimes done with a mechanical fastener like a post screw, but it violates the simplicity of the affair and often looks clunky. [Federico] uses a simple self fastener. A 5 mm hole in one part mates with two “flaps” in the other part. He’s made a separate video covering how to make the fastenings. He’s using a paper crafter’s Cricut-type machine to cut the parts. Pretty cool.
We’ve covered lots of other cool stuf from [Wolfcat Workshop]. If you want more of his automata eye candy, check out Simple Automata Extravaganza.
Nice try, but Strandbeest is Dutch, not German. Its plural is therefore Strandbeesten.
Nice try, but German plurals (mostly) end like Dutch plurals, with -en
Ein Biest, viele Biester
I gotta give this one up to the commenteers: I’m busted.
https://www.strandbeest.com/shop/a-strandbeesten-the-new-generation
I always wonder how Dutch came up with “monster” for “sample”. Beest for animal or beast sort of makes a lot of sense. Strandtier or beach animal is a nice name anyways.
As in English, the Dutch word monster is derived from the Latin word monstrum. A monster is a monstrosity in size or character.
Monster as sample shares the same root as the English “muster”, the verb of which (in both English and Dutch) means to inspect or to sample.
To muster(en) / monsteren(nl) can also mean to enroll into a ships crew, which is the original form of inspections (the troops/ships crew).
https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/muster
Quite interesting read and thanks for linking muster! Muster exists in German too as example, pattern and even model in meaning. I also see now the latin Latin mōnstrō (“to show”). I would never have guessed how dynamically words change.
A word like accumulator and accumulare are easier to spot, but I don’t know much about language. I am am lucky to speak three and only two of them well. I fell for a red herring by thinking about an actual monster :)
I wonder now what the etymology of monster (the thing that hides under your bed) comes from.
Latin ‘monstro’=’show’ does actually come from the Latin ‘monstrum’, which comes from ‘monere’=’warn’ — the sense of monstrum as “a creature that is monstrous in appearance or size” is sort of a special case of monstrum as ‘portent’ or ‘bad omen’; one of the classic omens of impending doom (or events that were later interpreted as such) was the occurrence of birth defects in newborn children and animals in the vicinity.
I thought it was a pun on strandmeester. The strandbeest is a master of the beach so to speak. A strandmeester usually takes care of flotsam beached on the beach, and if left unattended, a strandbeest ends up exactly that.
Why are the Dutch from from the Nederlands but the German are from Deutschland? :)
Because the English language developed quite randomly over many centuries.
“Duits” was the old Dutch ford for … well, being Dutch (Netherlands).
Our anthem is even stranger, it says we are of “Duitsen” (In current Dutch: German) blood, and we always honored the king of Spain (we were at war with Spain at the time of writing). the anthem was written by a Frenchman.
OMG, thank you so much for the mention Ann! Humor, beauty, and amazement. I don’t get complimented like that so often :)
Worth mentioning that the fun parametric tool I’m using to generate these designs is called Cuttle.xyz (https://cuttle.xyz/)
I’ve been working with them making longer format youTube tutorials and I genuinely really like it, check it out if you are looking for an intuitive vector tool that can still do a lot of fancy stuff like components, parameters and in-app custom javaScript.