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Flexagon!
"FLEXAGON!" , which debuted at the 2010 MoCCA Festival,
is by far the most complex Origami Comic I have made to date. The form was first suggested
to me by my math-teaching brother and, although I was intrigued and determined, creating a flexagon comic proved
to be a huge engineering and creative challenge. There were several points in the creative process where I almost gave
up and decided that creating a trihexaflexagonal comic was simply impossible.
FLEXAGON!
is a sci-fi adventure starring the intrepid Captain Rex Flexagon and his lovely partner Lt. Polly Gonigal of the SpaceTime*Rangers
as they battle their arch-nemesis Dr. Zon in an endless adventure that cleverly melds form and function for a unique
comics-reading experience.
FLEXAGON! is an Origami Comic in the form of a special
mathematical shape known as a 'flexagon’ (specifically, a trihexaflexagon) designed to be ‘flexed’ and flipped
to reveal different ‘pages’ as the story is read. Each hexagonal 'page' is made up of six triangles which
change their visual orientation relative to one another when the flexagon is 'flexed' or 'flipped.' Because
of this property, using this shape to create a comic proved to be extremely challenging.
If you'd like to learn more about
flexagons, here are a few sites:
Flexagons
Flexagon.net
FLEXAGON! also utilizes words known as ‘ambigrams’
which can be read upsidedown or sideways. Using ambigrams to create dialogue that would read differently depending on
how my flexagon was 'flexed' was a critical step in the creation of this comic. If you'd like to learn more about
ambigrams, visit this website:
Ambigram.com
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