We’re back! I’ve been super busy over the past several months with work and family stuff which is why I haven’t done any work on the site in a while. I’ve got a bit of time again so I’m going to try to finish up this Best Origami of 2018 feature hopefully before the end of 2019…

I’ve got the winners of the past categories all saved and will be announcing the winners once all the categories are done and voted for.

Also, to make up for the lack of activity I’m going to be giving away two copies of Origami Design Secrets by Robert J. Lang to the people signed up for my newsletter. You can find the link to sign up for that at the bottom of the site. I’ll be sending out an email soon with instructions on how to increase your odds of winning.

So with that out of the way let’s get started and check out the best fish and sea creatures that I saw during 2018. You can vote for your favourite at the end of the post and voting will be open for 2 weeks until September 4th just like the other categories.

Kei Watanabe designed a ton of fantastic fish in 2018 and we’ll start things off with amazing life-like chum salmon.

1) Chum Salmon, Designed and Folded by Kei Watanabe

Instructions not available

Winston is another amazing designer who’s a master at creating fish designs. Here is a fantastic Humphead Parrotfish and if you look up pictures of the actual animal you’ll see how perfect this paper version is.

2) Humphead Parrotfish, Designed and Folded by Winston

Instructions not available

Next we have this excellent octopus that’s all folded from a single square of paper. I’m quite impressed how you can get 8 legs out of that and this model is folded beautifully.

3) Octopus, Designed by Yojiro Sakai and folded by Hiroaki Kobayashi

Instructions not available

Here’s another incredibly life-like fish design from Kei Watnabe. He did design quite a few fish in 2018 and I had to pick a bunch of them for this post. I’ll let you all vote on which one you think is the best.

4) Japanese Sea Bass, Designed and Folded by Kei Watanabe

Instructions not available

I also had to featured several amazing fish designs from Winston as well. It was too difficult narrowing it down to just one or two. Here’s a Threadfin Butterflyfish that looks exactly like the real thing even down to the colour changes in the design.

5) Threadfin Butterfly Fish, Designed and Folded by Winston

Instructions not available

This is an absolutely beautiful photo of a beautifully folded clown fish.

6) Clown Fish, Designed by Yoo Tae Yong and Folded by Adriano Davanzo

Diagrams available in Origami Pro #4 – World Ocean Origami

A not so exciting fish in real life but this paper version is incredible and so life-like.

7) Pacific Bluefin Tuna, Designed and Folded by Kei Watanabe

Instructions not available

This is a pretty cool and a little bit ominous looking Hatchetfish. The photo here definitely captures the deep-sea nature of this fish and I really like the slightly 3-dimensional mouth.

8) Hatchetfish, Designed by 涂开明 and Folded by CaptainMoon

Instructions not avaialable

Another incredibly life-like design from Kei Watanabe. I really love how soft this fish looks and the rock in the photo is a really nice touch.

9) Japanese Fluvial Sculpin, Designed and Folded by Kei Watanabe

Instructions not available

And here’s another super realistic looking design from Winston of an Atlantic Cod.

10) Atlantic Cod, Designed and Folded by Winston

Instructions not available

This goldfish might not be as complicated as some of the other designs here but it’s definitely one of the prettiest fish I saw in 2018.

11) Goldfish, Designed by Ta Trung Dong and Folded by Agnieska (Agne) Mackonyte

Diagrams available in the 22nd Tanteidan Convention book

This is kind of an uglier looking fish but the amount of detail that went into this paper version is very impressive.

12) Inimicus Japonicus, Designed and Folded by Kei Watanabe

Instructions not available

Nguyễn Ngọc Vũ’s shark design is probably the best shark design I’ve seen. This version looks amazing. It’s expertly folded, especially all those individual teeth and I really love the wave and how it adds a touch of bright colour to the overall photo.

13) White Shark, Designed by Nguyễn Ngọc Vũ and Folded by Nguyen Nam Son

Diagrams available in VOG 2: Origami.vn

Here’s another gorgeous goldfish design that, like the previous model, is also from Vietnam.

14) Goldfish, Designed and Folded by Phạm Hoàng Tuấn

Diagrams available from Phạm Hoàng Tuấn’s Etsy Shop

I’ve got one more awesome design from Winston for this post, this time of something a bit different, a stingray. I really like how organic and “floaty” this looks.

15) Stingray, Designed and Folded by Winston

Instructions not available

Here’s another fantastic butterfly fish design, kind of different this time but again with a really great colour change.

16) Butterfly Fish, Designed by Red Paper and Folded by Nicolas Terry

Diagrams available in Pure Origami by Red Paper

Next is this cute little pair of orcas. The design is excellent and I really like how each one is folded slightly differently so they look like they have slightly different personalities and are in different positions of swimming.

17) Orcas, Designed and Folded by J.W Park

Instructions not available

Satoshi Kamiya probably has the most famous octopus design and this version looks fantastic.

18) Octopus, Designed by Satoshi Kamiya and Folded by Kim Ju Hyun

VIdeo instructions available from Mariano Zavala B.’s YouTube Channel

Closing things out for this post we have one more pair of super life-like fish from Kei Watanabe.

19) Opsariichthys Platypus, Designed and Folded by Kei Watanabe

Instructions not available

Which one of these do you think is the best origami fish or sea creature of 2018? Vote Below!

Feel free to vote for your own model and to encourage other people to vote as well. Voting will be open for 2 weeks and close on September 4th.

Voting is now closed.