SoylentNews

After writing software to make bitmaps for origami cubes and then making dozens of random designs, including cartoon characters, celebrities, memes (some from shock-sites) and fancy dress costumes (there's no shortage of that on the Inter-tubes), a friend asked if I could make designs which join at the edges. For example, a continuous pattern of water waves or a cube projection of a map of Earth. Actually, my first suggestion was placing Dress-Up Jesus onto the net of a cube. You might think that is blasphemous but the commedian, Bill Hicks asked "You think when Jesus comes back, he really wants to see a cross? That's like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant on." On that basis, what do you think his reaction would be to an organized religion which uses it as its primary symbol?

Anyhow, I've been working on bitmap designs which join on all four edges. Examples include:-

• Octagons and squares. I thought this would look like floor tiling but it looks more like a mishapen sportsball.
• A solved Rubik cube with the slight dodgy 1980s palette of #FFF, #F00, #F70, #FF0, #3F0, #03F.
• Diagonal lines separating squares of random colors. This looks like one of the more difficult Rubik cube variants.
• Inspired by My Ideal House, it took less than five minutes to make an abstract Mondrian style design as follows:-
  +---------------+---------------+-------+---------------+
  |               |               |       |               |
  +-----------+---+---------------+-------+    Yellow     |
  |   Blue    |   |               |       |               |
  +-----------+---+---------------+-------+---------------+
  |   Blue    |   |               |       |               |
  +-----------+---+---------------+  Red  |               |
  |           |   |               |       |               |
  +-----------+---+---------------+-------+---------------+
  |                               |       |               |
  |                               |       |               |
  |                               |       |               |
  +-------+-------+---------------+-------+               |
  |       |       |               |       |               |
  |       |       |               |       |               |
  |       |       |               |       |               |
  |Yellow |       |     Blue      |       |               |
  |       |       |               |       |               |
  |       |       |               |       |               |
  |       |       |               |       |               |
  +-------+-------+---------------+-------+-------+---+---+
  |       |       |               |               |   |   |
  |       |       +---------------+      Red      |   |   |
  |       |       |               |               |   |   |
  |       |       +---------------+---------------+---+---+
  |       |       |               |               |   |   |
  |       |       |               |               |   |   |
  |       |       |               |               |   |   |
  +-------+-------+---------------+---------------+---+---+

I may attempt to convert a Mercator projection of Earth to an origami cube. Obtaining the sections around the equator is easy. Just take the mid section of the map and divide into four strips. The artic regions only require a little more work via GIMP's polar co-ordinate distortion dialog box. Unfortunately, sections may have to rotated and shuffled to ensure that they assembled correctly. However, this doesn't require additional software and, for the final step, inputs don't have to be square or the same size.

I'm going to be off-line until next year but if anyone wants to troll, feel free to send a suitable bitmap and origami folding instructions to the Flat Earth Society.