You Should Definitely Give a Carp about these Beautiful Origami Koi

I’ve always been a fan of origami koi. There are only a few major koi designs but they’re always great and the koi people fold are always really beautiful. Often people use really great paper or make collections of rainbow coloured koi and do lots of other neat things with them.

Our first image is this beautiful collection of rainbow koi.

Koi, Designed by Riccardo Foschi and Folded by Stefano D’Erasmo

Video instructions available from Riccardo Foschi’s YouTube

Lots of people have coloured their paper so their koi look very much like the ones in real life.

Koi, Designed and Folded by Edgar Williams

Instructions not available

Won Park has designed one of the most famous origami koi designs and it’s folded using a dollar bill.

Koi, Designed by Won Park and Folded by craigfoldsfives

Diagrams available from Origami Resource Center

Here’s another beautiful collection of koi.

Koi, Designed and Folded by Riccardo Foschi

Video instructions available from Riccardo Foschi’s YouTube

Here’s a different kind of koi design that’s more like the ones you see on traditional asian buildings.

Shachihoko, Designed by Fumiaki Kawahata and Folded by P. Colman

Diagrams available in Origami Tanteidan Magazine #101

Here’s a collection of origami koi that’s made up to look like a Dong Ho painting.

Koi, Designed by Sipho Mabona and Folded by Lê Danh

Diagrams available in the Origami Tanteidan 14th Convention book

Here’s another collection of beautiful origami koi that are painted with ink after being folded.

Koi, Designed and Folded by Edgar Williams

Diagrams available via Dropbox

Here’s another beautiful collection of koi. There’s something about origami koi that makes everyone who folds them take much more artistic and beautiful photos.

Koi, Designed by Sipho Mabona and Folded by Lê Danh

Diagrams available in the Origami Tanteidan 14th Convention book

Here’s another awesome pond scene with some origami koi.

Koi, Designed by Sipho Mabona and Folded by Lê Danh

Diagrams available in the Origami Tanteidan 14th Convention book

Here’s a big collection of realistically coloured koi.

Koi, Designed by Sipho Mabona and Folded by Matthieu Georger

Diagrams available in the Origami Tanteidan 14th Convention book

Follow Matthieu Georger on Flickr

This koi is pretty neat because if you look closely you’ll see that the colouring is in the shape of Japan.

Koi, Designed by Sipho Mabona and Folded by nyanko sensei

Diagrams available in the Origami Tanteidan 14th Convention book

Robert J. Lang has a great koi design that takes a lot of work since you have to fold all those individual scales.

Koi, Designed by Robert J. Lang and Folded by Eric Vigier

Diagrams available in Origami Design Secrets Second Edition

Nyanko Sensei also made a great African koi.

Koi, Designed by Sipho Mabona and Folded by nyanko sensei

Diagrams available in the Origami Tanteidan 14th Convention book

Here’s another excellent realistically coloured paper koi.

Koi, Designed by Riccardo Foschi and Folded by NGUYỄN QUANG ANH

Video instructions available from Riccardo Foschi’s YouTube

This is another koi design that we haven’t seen yet in this post.

Kuchibeni Kohaku, Designed and Folded by Nguyen Ngoc Vu

Instructions not available

Here’s a couple more of Nguyen Ngoc Vu’s great Kuchibeni Kohaku.

Kuchibeni Kohaku, Designed and Folded by Nguyen Ngoc Vu

Instructions not available

Here’s another great collection of koi by Edgar Williams.

Koi, Designed and Folded by Edgar Williams

Diagrams available via Dropbox

I totally have the same paper that Thong Nguyen Nguyen used to fold these koi.

Koi, Designed by Sipho Mabona and Folded by Thong Nguyen Nguyen

Diagrams available in the Origami Tanteidan 14th Convention book

Here’s another excellent koi design.

Koi, Designed and Folded by Fabian Correa

Instructions not available

Here’s Fumiaki Kawahata’s traditional koi design again.

Shachihoko, Designed by Fumiaki Kawahata and Folded by Ferdinand Duenas

Diagrams available in Origami Tanteidan Magazine #101

Here’s another beautiful collection of rainbow koi.

Koi, Designed and Folded by Edgar Williams

Instructions not available

Here’s another excellent new koi design by Juanfran Carrillo.

Koi, Designed and Folded by Juanfran Carrillo

Instructions not available

This is another great arrangement of Won Park’s dollar koi.

Koi, Designed by Won Park and Folded by Bill Ori

Diagrams available from Origami Resource Center

Here’s another different koi design that’s a bit smaller and cuter.

Koi, Designed by Sebastien Limet and Folded by Stefan

Instructions not available

This is another beautiful and artistic paper koi photo.

Koi, Designed by Michael LaFosse and Folded by Edgar Williams

Diagrams available in Advanced Origami: An Artist’s Guide to Performances in Paper

This is another really cool idea using origami koi.

Koi, Designed and Folded by Won Seon Seo

Instructions not available

Sebastien Limet designed some great paper koi for a short film about origami.

Koi, Designed and Folded by Sebastien Limet

Instructions not available

Our final koi for this post are these two very colourful ones folded by Mariano Zavala B.

Koi, Designed by Sipho Mabona and Folded by Mariano Zavala B.

Diagrams available in the Origami Tanteidan 14th Convention book

That’s it for this post, hopefully you enjoyed these origami koi as much as I did. Let me know which one is your favourite in the comments.