The Gnat – Paper Airplane Instructions

One of the staple paper planes of my childhood, the Gnat, I’ve already covered in detailed folding instructions, but I think there are varying ways to learn origami and paper folding. I think the flow of the process of folding something and seeing it as a continuous thing rather than a series of very separate steps does help understand it more.

There’s that and the fact that I personally have always liked having something I can download and keep on my computer for future reference. So I present the folding instructions for the Gnat paper plane in both static infographic and animated GIF. Both are a bit on the heavy side, because of how much information they pack in, but I do hope you enjoy them and share them as you see fit.

Here is the animated GIF, created in the ever trustworthy GIMP editor:

Origami folding diagrams have been done a million ways, but I have enjoyed the photographic versions of them quite a bit which is why I selected that visual style for this site. Putting it all together in a single infographic, using Inkscape in this case, is its own pleasure, so here is the Gnat’s folding sequence in all its glory.

Enjoy this, and don’t forget to check out the more traditional written and visual instructions for the Gnat model, and my memories of paper planes as a kid on my blog.