How to Make a Origami Pokemon Rayquaza

I'm a huge fan of Pokemon and we've made several posts in the past about paper Pokemon. This time I've put together a master post of as many Pokemon that I can.

I had originally planned to put every single one that I've seen together in this post however there were just too much. I had to scale things down and went with just one image per Pokemon.

Some Pokemon are more popular than others. There are at least 5 different origami Charizard designs that I know of for example. Multiple people have folded the same Pokemon as well.

Because of this in this post we're going to feature the single best version of each origami Pokemon. Whether that be an image or a video.

We haven't quite managed to catch them all but we did put together about 100 of them which is quite an impressive amount.

Before we get into the Pokemon I made to take a minute to give a shout out to four amazing artists. Each of these people have designed a bunch of really amazing paper Pokemon.

Kakami Hitoshi is the first Pokemon designer I ever saw. He runs a website called Calico's Origami Aquarium where you can find all his Pokemon models. Plus he has lots of other animals and especially origami fish.

Henry Pham runs a fantastic YouTube channel with lots of video instructions for folding Pokemon. He has video instructions that show how to fold the best Eeveelutions I've ever seen. I've even folded a few of them myself.

Paper Ph2 (I unfortunately don't know their real name) runs another really great YouTube channel with tons of video instructions for origami Pokemon.

Finally I have to mention Lee Bo-Yeon, an artist from South Korea who has also designed a ton of really great Pokemon.

You'll see all four of these artists come up lots of times throughout this post.

So with all that out of the way, lets get started with Generation 1.

Generation 1: Pokemon Red/Blue/Green/Yellow

Generation 1 is arguably the best generation when it comes to Pokemon designs. This is also reflected with the number of different origami designs there are. You'll see there are way more Generation 1 designs than any other generation in this post.

First up is this video tutorial for a Bulbasaur designed by Henry Pham.

#001 Bulbasaur, Designed by Henry Pham

Henry Pham also designed this really great Charmander.

#004 Charmander, Designed by Henry Pham

Tadashi Mori definitely has my favourite Charizard design. It's pretty complex and not easy to fold though.

Charizard by Tadashi Mori — Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/tadashiorigami/17199775278/

#006 Charizard, Designed and Folded by Tadashi Mori

Video instructions available from Tadashi Mori's YouTube Channel

Henry Pham has designed each of the original starter Pokemon. Here's a tutorial for his Squirtle.

#007 Squirtle, Designed by Henry Pham

Finishing our the original generation starters here's a tutorial for a Blastoise.

#009 Blastoise, Designed by Henry Pham

Kakami Hitoshi designed this fantastic Pidgey. It's not a complex design but it looks really great, especially if you use brown and white paper.

#016 Pidgey, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Crease pattern available from Calico's Origami Aquarium

This Pidgeot design is easily one the best of all the Pokemon designs.

#017 Pidgeot, Designed by Henry Pham

Here's another really great design that's also not too complex but still looks really great.

#019 Rattata, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Crease pattern available from Calico's Origami Aquarium

There's a ton of different origami Pikachu designs out there. For this post I've picked what I think is one of the more unique looking designs by Ivan Danny Handoko.

#025 Pikachu, Designed and Folded by Ivan Danny Handoko

Crease pattern available from Ivan Danny's Flickr

I love the detail in this Raichu design. Especially that tail.

#026 Raichu, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Instructions not available

The paper used to fold this male Nidoran is the perfect colour.

#032 Nidoran Male, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Crease pattern available from Calico's Origami Aquarium

Here's a pretty adorable little Vulpix design. I especially like the shape of the head.

#037 Vulpix, Designed by Henry Pham

He's also designed a pretty fancy looking Ninetails as well.

#038 Ninetails, Designed by Henry Pham

Lee Bo-Yeon designed this great little Jigglypuff. The colour change on the eyes is a nice touch.

#039 Jigglypuff, Designed and Folded by Lee Bo-Yeon

Instructions not available

This Zubat is absolutely perfect.

#041 Zubat, Designed and Folded by Saku Saku

Video insturctions available from sakusaku858's YouTube channel

Just today Paper Ph2 uploaded this great Oddish tutorial to YouTube.

#043 Oddish, Designed by Paper PH2

I love how round and 3D this Venonat is.

#048 Venonat, Designed and Folded by Lee Bo-Yeon

Instructions not available

And here's a great Venomoth design to go along with the Venonat.

#049 Venomoth, Designed by Saku Saku

Here's a really great Psyduck design. Remember to use yellow and white paper and you'll get perfect colour changes on the face.

#054 Psyduck, Designed by Paper PH2

And here's the evolved form of Psyduck, Golduck.

#055 Golduck, Designed by Saku Saku

This Geodude design is absolutely fantastic! I'm very impressed how much it looks like a Geodude, especially since that's a really weirdly shaped Pokemon when you think about it.

#074 Geodude, Designed by Paper PH2

Here's a really cute Ponyta design with an excellent colour change in the design. It looks really great if you fold it with red and white or orange and white paper.

#077 Ponyta, Designed by Henry Pham

Slowpoke has always been one of my favourite Pokemon.

#079 Slowpoke, Designed and Folded by Ivan Danny Handoko

Instructions not available

Next is the evolved form Slowbro. The twist pattern on the shell is really nice, especially if you use white and pink paper so you get the mixed colours. It's a great seashell design.

#080 Slowbro, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Crease pattern available from Calico's Origami Aquarium

This Gastly is made using 48 simple Sonobe units.

Ghastly — Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/shua1618/8269723603/

#092 Gastly, Designed and Folded by Scott Keita Okamura

Instructions not available

There are a few different Gengar designs but in the end I had to go with this one by Paper Ph2. It's not too complex and looks excellent.

#094 Gengar, Designed by Paper Ph2

Here's another fantastic design from Kakami Hitoshi.

#096 Drowzee, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Crease pattern available from Calico's Origami Aquarium

This Voltorb isn't too difficult to fold so it's a great model to try if you're an origami beginner.

#100 Voltorb, Designed by Paper PH2

This Staryu and Starmie that Kakami Hitoshi designed are really just modular origami kusudamas. When you use exactly the right coloured paper though you end up with these great Pokemon.

#120 Staryu, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Instructions not available

#121 Starmie, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Instructions not available

Here's a really great Tauros design, especially the tails.

#128 Tauros, Designed by Henry Pham

There are a couple of really great Gyarados designs out there. Henry Pham has a really good one but for this post I had to go with this fantastic design by Kakami Hitoshi. It's not too complex but it still has tons of details and really captures the ferociousness of the Pokemon.

#130 Gyarados, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Instructions not available

Here's a really great Lapras design. I love how the shell on the back is a different colour.

#131 Lapras, Designed by Henry Pham

As mentioned at the start of this post, when it comes to Eeveelutions Henry Pham has some of the best designs. He's also nice enough to share them with these excellent video tutorials. I've tried folding them myself and they're not too difficult. They look really great too, especially the Vaporeon.

The hardest one I found was the Jolteon. The one I folded looked terrible but I think I just need more practice.

#133 Eevee, Designed by Henry Pham and Folded by Natalia Romanenko

Video tutorial available from Henry Pham's YouTube channel

#134 Vaporeon, Designed by Henry Pham

#135 Jolteon, Designed by Henry Pham

#136 Flareon, Designed by Henry Pham

I really like the rainbow coloured paper used here for this Omanyte.

#138 Omanyte, Designed and Folded by Lee Bo-Yeon

Instructions not available

If you're going to have an Omanyte you of course need a Kabutops to go with it.

#141 Kabutops, Designed and Folded by Hubert Villeneuve

Instructions not available

Everybody loves Snorlax and now you can fold your own!

#143 Snorlax, Designed by Henry Pham

Back whenPokemon Go first came out and everyone was playing it Henry Pham designed amazing origami versions of the 3 legendary birds that were also the mascots for the 3 teams in Pokemon Go. Articuno for Team Mystic, Zapdos for Team Instinct and Moltres for Team Valor.

These are all a little bit tricky to fold but the all look amazing.

#144 Articuno, Designed by Henry Pham

#145 Zapdos, Designed by Henry Pham

#146 Moltres, Designed by Henry Pham

Next we have possibly the cutest origami Pokemon design there is.

#147 Dratini, Designed by Adilio Toledo and Folded by Natalia Romanenko

Diagrams available for free from Origami-Shop.com

Here's a great somewhat 3D Dragonite design.

#149 Dragonite, Designed by Henry Pham

Our of all the multiple Mewtwo designs the one by Kakami Hitoshi is the best. The colour change on the tail is fantastic and couldn't have been easy to incorporate into the design.

#150 Mewtwo, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Instructions not available

Finally we have the last Pokemon of Generation 1, Mew.

Mew — Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/shua1618/8269723283/

#151 Mew, Designed and Folded by Scott Keita Okamura

Instructions not available

Generation 2: Gold/Silver/Crystal

Generation 2 was probably my favourite generation. It kept all the really great Pokemon designs from Generation 1 and added a bunch of new ones which were just as good. Generation 2 also introduced Espeon which is probably my all-time favourite Pokemon and Umbreon, another one of my favourites.

There are a lot of great origami Pokemon from Generation 2 as well. Let's get started with one of the starters.

#152 Chikorita, Designed by Paper PH2

One of the most famous Pokemon from Generation 2 is Togepi so of course there's an origami version of it too.

#175 Togepi, Designed by Paper PH2

Here's a really great Wooper design.

#194 Wooper, Designed and Folded by Scott Keita Okamura

Instructions not available

If you thought the previous Eeveelution designs by Henry Pham were great wait until you take a look at his Espeon and Umbreon designs!

#196 Espeon, Designed by Henry Pham

#197 Umbreon, Designed by Henry Pham

Kakami Hitoshi designed a whole collection of different Unown.

#201 Unown, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Instructions not available

Here's a great little Dunsparce. It's nice to see Dunsparce getting a bit of love.

#206 Dunsparce, Designed and Folded by Saku Saku

Crease pattern available from Saku Saku's Flickr

Someone even designed an origami Delibird.

#225 Delibird, Designed and Folded by Scott Keita Okamura

Instructions not available

This Skarmory is amazing, especially when it's folded with silver coloured paper like you can see here.

#227 Skarmory, Designed by Shintaro Miyamoto and Folded by Xu Daniel

Crease Pattern available from Comic Folder

Lee Bo-Yeon designed this really great Kingdra.

#230 Kingdra, Designed by Lee Bo-Yeon and Folded by Alex Mironenko

Crease pattern available from Lee Boyeon's Flickr

This Suicune is definitely one of the best origami Pokemon designs I've ever seen! I really hope one day Kakami Hitoshi designs a Raikou and an Entei too.

#245 Suicune, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Instructions not available

I absolutely love this Lugia. It's another one of the best Pokemon origami designs I've ever seen. It's all one sheet of paper and the colour changes are fantastic. It took Ji Woo Han 10 hours to fold this one.

#249 Lugia, Designed by Hashimoto Haruka and Folded by Ji Woo Han

Crease pattern available from Hashimoto Haruka's Flickr

And of course if you've got a great paper Lugia you also need a great Ho-Oh to go along with it and to wrap up Generation 2. This Ho-Oh uses 8 sheets of paper.

#250 Ho-Oh, Designed and Folded by Mark Hanke

Instructions not available

Generation 3: Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald

Generation 3 launched on the Gameboy Advance in 2002/2003 depending on your country. This generation added a ton of new features as well as some very unique looking new Pokemon.

We'll start this generation off with possibly the cutest starter, Torchic.

#255 Torchic, Designed and Folded by Vincent Achard

Instructions not available

Kirlia is apparently a pretty popular Pokemon because there are a couple of different Kirlia designs. This one is probably my favourite.

#281 Kirlia, Designed and Folded by Kota Imai

Crease pattern available from Kota Imai's Flickr

Here's quite an impressive looking Gardevoir to go along with the previous Kirlia.

#282 Gardevoir, Designed by Jin and Folded by Xu Daniel

Instructions not available

Manectric is another one of my favourite Pokemon and this design is fantastic. I love how it perfectly uses colour changes so some parts of the model are yellow and others are blue, just like the actual Pokemon.

#310 Manectric, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Instructions not available

Lunatone is not a Pokemon that I would have expected someone to design. Someone did though and it's an absolutely fantastic looking origami Pokemon.

Origami Lunatone — Image source: https://www.flickr.com/photos/47869008@N08/8343112553/

#337 Lunatone, Designed and Folded by Charles Wilson

Instructions not available

Absol is another one of my favourite Pokemon so it's awesome to see a paper version.

#359 Absol, Designed and Folded by CahoonasOrigami

Instructions not available

Here's a really great Relicanth design. This is another excellent example of using a colour change in the design and two-sided paper.

#369 Relicanth, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Crease pattern available from Calico's Origami Aquarium

Latios and Latias are both excellent Pokemon so of course there are origami versions of both of them. The really great thing is that they're essentially the same design except for the colour. If you use red and white paper you end up with Latias and if you use blue and white paper you end up with Latios (I think I got that right).

There are a couple of really great Latios and Latias designs out there so picking one for this post was a bit difficult. In the end I decided on this one which isn't too hard to fold and still looks really great. The colour changes match the actual Pokemon perfectly.

#380 Latias and #381 Latios, Designed by Wan Origami

The main legendaries in Generation 3 are Kyogre and Groudon. I managed to find a somewhat obscure Japanese YouTube channel with video instructions showing how to fold both of these. The designs are really great too.

#382 Kyogre, Designed by st te

#383 Groudon, Designed by st te

Jirachi is another legendary from Generation 3 and I absolutely love this Jirachi design. The 3 little strips of paper might technically be cheating but I don't mind at all.

#385 Jirachi, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Instructions not available

Deoxys is the final legendary for Generation 3 and ending things here we have this awesome shiny version of Deoxys. The whole model is folded from a single square of paper and it perfectly uses colour changes to match the actual Pokemon which is very impressive.

#386 Deoxys, Designed and Folded by Scott Keita Okamura

Instructions not available

Generation 4: Diamond/Pearl/Platinum

Generation 4 launched on the Nintendo DS in 2008 or 2009 depending on your country. This generation saw a pretty big graphical update and introduced a lot of excellent new Pokemon. Leafeon, another one of my favourite Pokemon is from this generation and we'll see a really good origami Leafeon in a bit.

We'll start off this generation again with the fire-type starter. I tend to usually pick the grass-type starter but the fire ones always seem to be the most popular.

#390 Chimchar, Designed by Henry Pham

Ambipom is a pretty unique looking Pokemon and this paper version captured it perfectly.

#424 Ambipom, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Crease pattern available from Calico's Origami Aquarium

Lucario is probably the most popular Pokemon from this generation so it makes sense that we'd have an origami version.

#448 Lucario, Designed and Folded by Charles Wilson

Instructions not available

Leafeon is another one of my all-time favourite Pokemon and I usually have it on my team. In addition to all his other excellent Eeveelution designs Henry Pham also has this awesome Leafeon. I've folded it myself and it's not too hard. You have to use white and green sided paper and for the most accurate look you need to fold with the white side as the dominant side and make the green side the back of the paper.

#470 Leafeon, Designed by Henry Pham

Probopass is a pretty obscure Pokemon but yep, there's an origami version!

#476 Probopass, Designed and Folded by Lee Bo-Yeon

Instructions not available

A YouTuber named Axojisan has designed a great Dialga and Palkia. I've folded the Dialga myself and it's not too hard and looks great.

#483 Dialga, Designed by Axojisan

#484 Palkia, Designed by Axojisan

Here's an awesome Darkrai model that uses 2 sheets of paper with a different colour on each side to get the 4 colours in the completed model.

#491 Darkrai, Designed and Folded by Scott Keita Okamura

Instructions not available

Kakami Hitoshi designed one of the cutest paper Pokemon I've ever seen. He's got both the land form and sky form versions of Shaymin.

#492 Shaymin Land Form, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Instructions not available

#492 Shaymin Sky Form, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Instructions not available

You can totally use different coloured paper to fold all the various types of Arceus.

#493 Arceus, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Crease pattern available from Calico's Origami Aquarium

The final Pokemon from this generation is Victini.

#494 Victini, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Crease pattern available from Calico's Origami Aquarium

Generation 5: Black/White

Generation 5 was a little bit different than the previous ones. Generations 2, 3 and 4 all included Pokemon from previous generations. As you played you definitely encountered some new Pokemon but you also ran into lots of Pokemon from the previous generations.

Black and White changed this and throughout the entire game you only encountered brand new Pokemon that were specially designed for this generation. After you completed the game you could start encountering older Pokemon though.

The developers wanted to capture the feel of how things were back in Generation 1 where everything was brand new.

Starting off this generation origami-wise we have each of the 3 starters.

#495 Snivy, Designed and Folded by Sea Crab

Instructions not available

#498 Tepig, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Crease pattern available from Calico's Origami Aquarium

Oshawott — Image source: http://calicoorigami.web.fc2.com/main/pokemon_mijyumaru.html

#501 Oshawatt, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Crease pattern available from Calico's Origami Aquarium

Lee Bo-Yeon designed this excellent Scraggy.

#559 Scraggy, Designed and Folded by Lee Bo-Yeon

Instructions not available

Zorua is one of the most popular Pokemon from this generation so of course there's a paper version.

#570 Zorua, Designed and Folded by Lee Bo-Yeon

Instructions not available

Reuniclus isn't really a Pokemon that I would expect to be that popular but here's an origami version. It's very well designed too.

#579 Reuniclus, Designed and Folded by Charles WIlson

Instructions not available

Our final Pokemon for this generation is really great Volcarona.

#637 Volcarona, Designed and Folded by Charles Wilson

Instructions not available

Generation 6: X/Y

Pokemon X and Y released on the Nintendo 3DS in 2013 and was the first time that the series went into full 3D, instead of using 2D sprites. It also introduced another bunch of great new Pokemon.

First up is one of my favourite starters and this design by Kakami Hitoshi is really, really cute.

#653 Fennekin, Designed and Folded by Kakami Hitoshi

Crease pattern available from Calico's Origami Aquarium

Greninja is arguably one of the most popular Pokemon from this generation. Here's a great tutorial showing how to fold a paper one.

#658 Greninja, Designed by Henry Pham

Henry Pham also designed this amazing Sylveon. The design is pretty amazing and even has those ribbons. Unfortunately there's no tutorial for it yet so all we have is this video demo of it.

#700 Sylveon, Designed by Henry Pham

This Yveltal is easily another one of the most impressive looking origami Pokemon I've ever seen. It's folded from a single sheet of paper. If you use a sheet of black and red paper you end up perfectly matching the colours in the actual Yveltal design.

#717 Yveltal, Designed and Folded by Ivan Danny Handoko

Instructions not available

Paper PH2 made this great tutorial for a cute little Zygarde cell.

#718 Zygarde Cell, Designed by Paper PH2

Our final Pokemon for this generation is the unbound form of Hoopa.

#720 Hoopa Unbound, Designed by st te

Generation 7: Sun/Moon

Pokemon Sun and Moon just came out so there hasn't been a lot of origami designed from these games yet. YouTuber st te though has created video tutorials for the main two legendaries from each of the games.

#791 Solgaleo, Designed by st te

#792 Lunala, Designed by st te

Wow, that's a lot of origami Pokemon! We'll probably keep updating this post into the future too as we see more.

In the mean time, let us know which one of these is your favourite in the comments. If you fold any of these feel free to share a photo of it with us too. We'd love to see!

How to Make a Origami Pokemon Rayquaza

Source: https://origami.me/pokemon-origami/