Folded Paper I: Sipho Mabona

My six-year-old son is obsessed with paper airplanes. There’s a giant pile of them on our dining room table. He varies the design, or makes them huge or so tiny he can hardly fold them. But he’s on to something.

Sipho Mabona folded paper planes from the age of five until he ran out of designs more than a decade later. After another decade, he was deep into origami—not just folding, but designing. Mabona then began making stop motion films of his work, and last year won an award for the extraordinary film he made for Asics.

The precision of his work, captured in digital graphics, is counterbalanced by its vitality; his insects and animals look almost real, and his stop-motion videos almost breathe with life. Images and videos after the jump, and more on Mobona’s flickr site.

Praying-Mantis

THE MAKING OF AN ORIGAMI KOI from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.

Tony Williams: DREAMING OF YOUR LOVE (KOFT video contest WINNER!!!) from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.

Origami In the Pursuit of Perfection from MABONA ORIGAMI on Vimeo.

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Julie Greicius was Art Editor for The Rumpus when it launched in January 2009. One year later, she became Senior Literary Editor, and later, Senior Features Editor. Julie also co-edited the first book published by The Rumpus, Rumpus Women, Vol. 1, featuring personal essays and illustration from twenty kick-ass contributors. Her writing been featured on The Rumpus, Midnight Breakfast, Stanford Medicine Magazine, and BuzzFeed, as well as in the anthology The 27th Mile. She lives in California and is a member of The Rumpus Advisory Board.

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The Rumpus publishes original fiction, poetry, literary humor writing, comics, essays, book reviews, and interviews with authors and artists of all kinds. Our mostly volunteer-run magazine strives to be a platform for risk-taking voices and writing that might not find a home elsewhere. We lift up new voices alongside those of more established writers our readers may already know and love. We want to bring new perspectives into the conversation that will make us all look deeper.

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