I recently found on the interweb an article about an artist in Korea who had designed a new version of the classic Kumiki elephant. This one could be produced from a single thickness of material, so making manufacture much easier.
See One Eyed Fish for more from the artist.
Obviously I was very interested in the puzzle and wanted to see if I could get hold of one. I wrote to the artist via their website and they very quickly responded. They did have the puzzle for sale, but only in a 'foam' version (kind of similar to the happy cubes). I decided to order one and a deal was struck.
About 2 weeks after first finding the site I had one of the puzzles in my hand, very nicely packaged in a box, with an instruction book.
The story is that a group of one eyed fish want to be an elephant, so they get together and make one. On the right you can see the pieces are cut out of sheet in what looks like a whale shape. Each individual piece looks like a stylized fish, so this all fits with the story in the book.
Having put together a few kumiki elephants before, I decided to simply take the pieces and put them together - however, this puzzle is slightly different, and it took a minute or two to work out how the pieces fit together.
The final puzzle is on the left - with a standard size rubik cube for scale. As the pieces are made of the foam, the friction helps keep the puzzle together, particularly the ears which are very different to a standard wooden elephant.
The artist has mentioned that they may be making the puzzle in other materials later, and I am keen to see how they get on. I would particularly like the small plastic ones, or even a much larger wooden one.
Once made I decided to introduce her (she is pink!) to the rest of the herd :)
