Welcome to our celebration of 25 years of Elite.
From here you can download pdf files of Mark Bolitho's exclusive Elite Origami plans for you to make and share.
Below is the foreword Mark has written, explaining the origins of the Elite Origami.
Elite and Origami
Ian Bell and I have been friends for many years. We had been at school together and lived on the same street. Back in the 1980s I would regularly visit his house and he would show me a new game he was developing, that game became Elite. The BBC micro had been around for a few years and Acornsoft had published a handful of games that at the time mainly emulated arcade games of the time, such as defeneder and pacman. Elite was a game set in an almost infitite universe, it was unlike anything that existed at the time.
After the initial launch the game was a success. As a result the promoters of the game had decided to enhance the Elite package and commissioned a story that was subsequently included within the game. Ian knew I was interested in origami and he asked me if I would develop an origami version of the Cobra spaceship from the game. Eventually I came up with a design and drafted the instructions. He then took them to the company that was promoting Elite for possible inclusion with future editions. Despite our enthusiasm for it, it was not adopted and remained unpublished.
Earlier this year Ian Simons from GameCity contacted me, having spoken with Ian Bell he had become aware that an origami model existed and asked if I would be interested in resurecting the design. Fortunatly I had archived the original artwork and was able to find it and include it in this booklet. Inspired by the discussions I had had with both Ians I set about designing a series of Elite space ships that could be recreated in paper and this book is the result.
This booklet includes the original artwork drawn up in 1984. It also includes folding instructions for some of the other spaceships and objects from the game. To make it easier to follow most of the models have an accompanying crease pattern sheet that should be used in conjunction with the instructions. The diagrams explain how the crease patterns should be folded.
Mark Bolitho
9th September 2009
