The Origami Forum

Hey forum. It's been a while. Couple of years. Hi.

I am tasked with something I don't know how to approach. I'm required to fold some models with a moderate complexity. They're for a video in which they have to be unfolded with an animation very similar to Sipho Mabona's stop motion.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqtehl0IV-0 (I don't know how to embed videos, sorry)

The catch is that the unfolded paper must be a photo of something, and must be in the hidden side of the model. Now, I'm not sure now if it's possible to fold printing paper without breaking the ink, or with a decent thickness to withstand the amount of folding, because the model must be a little complex.
Wet folding is impossible, of course, given the printing and the fact that it must be unfolded. I'm doing some tests right now with an extra thick - photo paper+foil+tissue mix, but I don't think it's going to hold. If this fails, I'll go straight to folding the photos and seeing if I can give it a decent shape with clips or something, but I don't think it's a good option either.
I'm thinking that printing in tissue paper would be perfect, but I don't know if that's even possible.

So, if you have any experience on the subject, or any ideas on how to proceed, I would greatly appreciate the comments and all.

It's maybe not what you're looking for, but this is how I would do it:

- Print your picture on regular paper;
- Fold your model with this paper;
- Unfold it while taking many pictures;
- For the last step(s) of your video, substitute your model with a barely folded real photo-paper.

And voila.

i may have miss understood, but you could take the pictures of you folding it on regular printer paper and just play the animation in reverse. Then your left over photo wont have any creases on it at all.

You might be able to make white double tissue and then us a laserprinter to print on the tissue. Might turn into a mess though. So don't use your own printer....

XD I wouldn't want to be the owner of that printer.
If it works,what you suggested might actually be a good idea. I've actually printed stuff on tracing paper. If i remember correctly, it didn't turn out too good. Actually I'm not sure printing on any paper besides printer paper is a good idea.

Before Paper Fionn posted, I was actually thinking of the same thing. With some clever camera angles, you could (probably)mostly hide the crease filled portions of the picture while you're "unfolding" them ( by showing the pictures backwards).