Ancient Dragon by Satoshi Kamiya

The Ancient Dragon origami by Satoshi Kamiya is my most favorite model he created and by far my all-time fave origami. What I love about the model is it's 3D! You can even play with it if the paper you used is strong enough.

This complex origami requires a very large sheet of strong paper, suitable for folding.
When I first tried this model, I usually use regular construction papers. And the paper always tends to tear apart because of the stress from folds especially on step 58 wherein there are several pleats to perform. Kamiya suggested that the size of paper to be 50X50 and I strongly recommend to follow this or use a bigger paper if you want to at least get to the last steps at your first try.
I don't know what kind of paper Kamiya used on his model. I used what they call wax paper. 4 pieces of it, then I put them together with a clear packaging tape because 1 piece of wax paper is not enough and the biggest available size is still not enough. Wax paper is really strong (yeah, really strong that I folded my Ancient Dragon about 4 years ago but the wings are still in perfect shape and the whole model is really stable) but really tough to fold. So the larger the paper you will use, the better.

It took me 10 hours to finish this model as close to Kamiya's design and got my fingers really aching! But it doesn't matter after you see the finished product!
For its difficulty, if you haven't given it a try, or you're wondering. I'll rate it 10/10. Wherein 1=easy, 10=difficult. What I mean easy is like origamies as easy as the crane, traditional boat, or paper plane or any models like that, that are usually taught to us by our parents or when we are at elementary school. And my rating scale is from a perspective of a beginner: can fold easy origami models only. If you're just a beginner, I suggest that you try easier models first. You can give this a try but without enough experience, this will be really tough.

The diagrams of the Ancient Dragon is included in Satoshi Kamiya's book entitled "Works of Satoshi Kamiya" with a crease pattern beside the photo of the real finish product. The diagrams are really clear with instructions in Japanese and English language.