origami.plus

What It Is

Origami.plus is a personal original origami tutorial website founded by origami artist Stéphane Gigandet. The platform is dedicated to providing step-by-step instructions for a vast range of origami models, covering animals, plants, geometric shapes, and various holiday themes. By combining illustrated instructions with videos, it helps craft enthusiasts around the world learn the art of origami with ease.

Core Dimensions

• Course Areas: Focuses on the art of handmade origami, with creative subcategories such as pixel origami, modular origami (including cubes and mosaics), and 3D paper art.
• Teaching Format: Uses a dual teaching model of “high-definition illustrated steps + YouTube video demonstrations.” To address the difficulty of understanding traditional origami diagrams, each step includes real-life photos, supplemented by full videos, greatly lowering the learning barrier.
• Instructor/Organization Background: Independently operated by Stéphane Gigandet. All models are his original designs and are protected by international copyright law.
• Teaching Languages: Highly internationalized, supporting seven languages including English, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, and Chinese.
• Certification/Certificates: No professional certification is offered, but the site features distinctive interactive projects, such as a YouTube paper play button and a global Santa Claus map, providing fun achievement-based experiences.

Pricing

All illustrated and video tutorials on the site are completely free. The creator accepts voluntary support from users through Patreon and also generates income by selling related products such as digital patterned paper packs, Halloween origami books, and themed T-shirts.

Pros and Cons

Pros: 1) Dual-track teaching with images and videos, making lessons intuitive and easy to follow; 2) a rich and continuously updated model library, covering difficulty levels from easy to moderately challenging; 3) multilingual support that is highly friendly to Chinese users; 4) global photo interaction maps help create an active community atmosphere.
Cons: 1) Videos are hosted on YouTube, which cannot be accessed directly in mainland China, affecting the full learning experience; 2) copyright restrictions are very strict, and users are not allowed to publish their own tutorials or diagrams based on the models; 3) some moderately challenging models, such as the jumping cat, involve many detailed steps and require considerable patience.

Who It’s For

Suitable for origami beginners, craft enthusiasts, parents looking for parent-child activities, and pixel/modular paper art fans who enjoy LEGO or Minecraft.

Access in China

The main website can be accessed directly, but the core video tutorials are embedded from YouTube, so the video portion is blocked in mainland China. The overall experience is partially limited. A proxy is needed to access the full video-based teaching service.