About
Paper Children are paper cut-out models of anime characters that are staged in such a way that they appear to be interacting with the surrounding real-life objects. One of the most common forms this takes is a real life hand holding a drawing up as if they were being lifted by their shirt.
Origin
The exact beginnings of “Paper Children” art cannot be told for certain, considering the fact that the meme is very closely tied to paper dolls, a similar concept which dates back for more than a thousand years. The first paper dolls known to archeologists are kimonos cut and folded from ancient paper in Japan, c. 800 AD[6] and the first manufactured paper dolls were produced by S&J Fuller in London, 1810[5]. Modern paper dolls are often found as cutouts inside various paper products ranging from children’s books to happy meal containers from McDonalds[7].
The act of photographing paper cut-out models and sharing them online most likely began on the Japanese web through origami hobbyist groups and imageboards and subsequently spread overseas, particularly on the Korean web in the early 2000s. The earliest known instance of Paper Child to circulate on the English-speaking web can be found in a DeviantART page[11] posted on December 16th, 2006.
Spread
The DeviantART group “Paper Children” was formed on January 25th, 2008 and a notable series of Paper Child artworks were uploaded by DeviantART user Pimmy on April 27th, 2008. Throughout the year, the origami phenomenon quickly spread via English imageboards including 4chan, spawning hundreds of photographs depicting paper cutout models alongside real life objects. The meme was covered by Moe fan blog MoeSide on July 27th, 2008.
In June 2009, a website showcasing examples of these paper dolls called Paper Child[4] was started. Multiple Deviantart groups have been set devoted to them[1][2], the most popular of which, Paper Children[3], has just under 1000 watchers.
Notable Derivatives
Search Interest
As we can see from the Google Insights charts, search interest into this meme has been fairly high for a long time now, being searched a considerable amount even before the Insight’s beginning year of 2004. This unfortunately makes it a lot harder to determine the time of origin, although it does demonstrate the longevity of the meme, with only a minimal decline in interest over the years,
External References
[1] Deviantart – We Love Paper Child
[2] Deviantart – Paper Child Club
[3] Deviantart – Paper Children
[4] PaperChild.net – Paper Child
[5] Original Paper Dolls Artist Guild History of Paper Dolls
[6] Wikipedia – Paper Child
[7] EuroSouvenirLand – Happy Meal Cut-outs
[8] Deviantart – Paper-Children
[9] Deviantart – Browsing DeviantART for Paper Child
[10] 4chanarchive – Paperchild thread
[11] Deviantart – Paper Child Shinra
[12] MoeSide – Anime Paperchild