Origami Narwhal Instructions

NARWHAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL! Apparently there's and H in there...never knew that until I wiki'd it.

Listen to some happy/funny music while you fold this...it's required: [link] [link]

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Overall I am quite happy with this design, and glad it was recently suggested/requested by ~xxxMinxKittyxxx1031. I'm up for more challenges if people have ideas.

The other narwhal designs I'm familiar with have the horn/tusk being the same color as the body, which I wanted to avoid for the sake of experimentation. It took about 45min of staring at a square piece of paper in front of me while I figured it out mentally (demonstrating that it's not that complicated lol) before I folded the first draft of it. I got somewhat lucky and the first draft worked fine.

A note on the tail folds
When you "pull out some paper," make sure that underneath this flap you form a white diamond shape. You want it to be as symmetric and square as possible. The unfolding of the tail fin is a bizzare one. I do not know if it has a name. The paper just kind of pulls out and flattens on its own if the creases are well-defined. That's the most difficult fold in this design; the rest is fairly simple.

A note on making the model stay closed at the top
I had some problems with this. I have noticed that it stays together very well right after I fold it. It then makes an effort to undo itself over time. This is probably partly due to the humidity in my home, but I anticipate others will observe the same issue when using thick paper or, as in my case, foil paper in a humid room. You have a few options:

- Don't make the model 3-D. It's the 3-D strain that seems to make it do this. However, that takes half the fun out of it in my view.

- Wet fold and spend a LOT of time shaping, although this will not solve the issue on foil paper.

- Wet fold with a few drops of glue in the water you're using as recommended by Montroll in one of his books.

- Do some extra folding to try to "lock" the inner folds on the head. This is probably the best approach for the complete purist, but I have only had marginal success with it.

- Or finally...the easiest quick-fix: one very itty bitty drop of glue or some other sticky substance at the top of the head. Additional glue is completely unnecessary with good folds. Some may consider this cheating, but I think it's a valid option for situations like this, since it seems to be an paper issue in response to environmental conditions (an affliction of a good many other 3-D designs I've seen by other people). The model is possible to form cleanly without adhesive, but without some defense it might start to lose some of its shaping over time if kept in the wrong environment.



Usage Policy
To me this design is not complicated, so I would expect that other people have happened across similar to nearly identical patterns. However, I did develop this myself and therefore hope that my choice of details is at least somewhat unique. If you follow this tutorial to create a narwhal and wish to post the result as artwork either here or elsewhere, please credit the design you used to create the model.