Origami Safari: 26 Beautiful African Animals Made Out of Paper

Animals are probably the most common thing that people fold out of paper.

Rather than just making posts featuring random origami animals I’m going to try to group them together into themes. This post will focus on African animals such as elephants, lions, giraffes and more.

There’s a lot of awesome looking origami here so lets begin with some origami rhinos.

We’ll start with this fantastic rhino posing on a blog of wood.

Rhino, Designed by Quentin Trollip and Folded by Assaf Kessler

Diagrams available in Origami Sequence

Here’s a fantastic adult and child rhino by João Charrua.

Large Rhino Designed by João Charrua and Small Rhino Designed by Rui Roda, Both Folded by João Charrua

Small rhino instructions available in Mini Neo Issue 24

Here’s a different white Rhino design by József Zsebe.

White Rhino, Designed and Folded by József Zsebe

Instructions not available

There are several different origami giraffe designs and one of the most famous ones is by Gen Hagiwara.

Giraffe, Designed and Folded by Gen Hagiwara

Diagrams available in Origami Tanteidan 18th Convention Book

This giraffe was partly folded and then unfolded so the spots could be painted on in the correct sections. The end result looks fantastic!

Giraffe, Designed by John Montroll and Folded by Folded Wilderness

Diagrams available in African Animals In Origami

Here’s another fantastic giraffe design by Yasushi Miyashita.

Giraffe, Designed and Folded by Yasushi Miyashita

Crease pattern available from miyamiya0419’s Flickr

Shuki Kato has a fantastic giraffe design, here’s are both the 2014 and 2015 version of his giraffe.

Giraffe, Designed and Folded by Shuki Kato

Diagrams available from Origami USA

József Zsebe designed this cute little origami warthog.

Warthog, Designed and Folded by József Zsebe

Diagrams available in Paper & Form

You can’t have a post about African animals without including some origami lions. Here are two great male lions designed by Juyoung Choi.

Lion, Designed by  Juyoung Choi and Folded by Eyal R

Instructions not available

Nguyễn Nam Sơn designed this incredible lion which, like a lot of Vietnamese origami uses a lot of curved shapes for a very unique look.

Lion, Designed by Nicolas Galjado Henrique and Folded by Nguyễn Nam Sơn

Instructions not available

Here’s a very different lion design this time by Satoshi Kamiya.

Lion, Designed by Satoshi Kamiya and Folded by Chris Heynen

Diagrams available in Works of Satoshi Kamiya 2, 2002 – 2009

You also, of course, have to have origami elephants in a post about African animals.  Here’s a great elephant couple folded by Eyal R.

Elephants, Designed by Artur Biernacki and Folded by Eyal R

Diagrams available in The Beauty of Origami

Here’s the same elephant but this time it’s folded by a different folder and you can see it has a bit of a different personality from the previous ones.

Elephant, Designed by Artur Biernacki and Folded by Damian Malicki

Diagrams available in The Beauty of Origami

Here’s a very different but very cute little elephant design from Akiko Yamanashi

Elephants, Designed by Akiko Yamanashi and Folded by Agnieska (Agne) Mackonyte

Diagrams available in NOA Magazine #441

This is a fantastic elephant design because it’s folded from one sheet of paper with one side grey and one side white. When the model is complete you end up with white tusks using the back of the paper and the rest of the model is grey using the front of the paper.

Elephant, Designed and Folded by Quentin Trollip

Diagrams available in Origami Sequence

Cheetahs might not be the first animal you think of when you think of Africa but they are there and there are some fantastic origami ones. I really love the face and over all body shape of this one.

Cheetah, Designed and Folded by David Llanque

Instructions not available

The best part of this cheetah is the spots that are painted on the paper. When the final model is folded it looks amazing.

Cheetah, Designed by Ares Alanya and Folded by P. Colman

Crease pattern available from Ares Alanya’s Flickr

This next photo is especially awesome because Kunsulu folded both a springbok and a cheetah putting them into a great action photo.

Cheetah Designed by Ares Alanya, Springbok Designed by Quentin Trollip both Folded by Kunsulu

Cheetah crease pattern available from Ares Alanya’s Flickr

Springbok diagrams available in Origami Sequence

This hippo design is awesome, especially the teeth. With two coloured paper the teeth end up a different colour like you can see in the photo.

Hippo, Designed by Robert J. Lang and Folded by Hiroaki Kobayashi

Diagrams available in the Beauty of Origami

Komatsu Hideo has also designed a great origami hippo as well.

Hippo, Designed by Komatsu Hideo and Folded by Antoine S. (origoku)

Diagrams available in Works of Hideo Komatsu

Here’s one more great hippo design this time by Quentin Trollip, the wide open mouth is especially excellent.

Hippo, Designed and Folded by Quentin Trollip

Instructions not available

This might be my favourite origami gorilla. It’s a very simple design but the shapes and curves really give it a lot of character.

Gorilla, Designed and Folded by Fabian Correa

Instructions not available

This is a great zebra design that doesn’t work at all unless you use black and white paper. It’s very impressive how the two sides of the paper are used to make stripes.

Zebra, Designed and Folded by József Zsebe

Instructions not available

This pangolin model by Eric Joisel is a great looking origami model. The entire model including every one of the scales is folded from a single square sheet of paper.

Pangolin, Designed by Eric Joisel and Folded by Alex Satsukawa

Instructions not available

The ants this pangolin is stalking are a nice touch.

Pangolin, Designed by Eric Joisel and Folded by Kunsulu

Instructions not available

This last pangolin took an incredible 60 hours to fold the pre-creases and then another 45 hours to assemble the completed model. Andrey Ermakov took a month and a half to fold it out of a 1.2m x 1.2m square of paper to fold this spectacular looking model.

Pangolin op.19/2.0, Designed and Folded by Andrey Ermakov

Diagrams available in Andrey Ermakov’s book

That it for today’s collection of African animals. If you’re interested in folding some great origami animals check out the book African Animals In Origami. It’s a great collection of African animals and none of them are too difficult to fold.

If you liked this origami be sure to visit all these talented artists and let them know what you think!