Gahkuen Link - Origami VFX

This post delves more into the process behind the Origami-inspired VFX made for Gahkuen Link.
I dealt with two challenges during this project:

The first was developing a character and moveset reflecting the theme of origami. Originally, this character was supposed to be a ranged character to fit the other melee character. She threw paper cranes as her normal attack, but that didn't feel inherently tied to the theme of origami at all. So after a conversation with the game designer, she changed from a ranged character to a melee character and now smacks enemies by folding paper. Much more origami.

The second was how to model and animate origami folding. I could've folded and unfolded the physical origami and copied the fold pattern on a plane mesh by making cuts, but having to deal with that many vertices while animating made it a much harder and more confusing process. Instead, while making the animation, I was folding the origami myself to understand step by step where to make cuts in the mesh and animate them.
I was debating between doing rig animation or blendshape animation. I eventually chose blendshape animation because blendshapes retain information on where vertices go, so you can add new vertices to the mesh without affecting previous blendshapes. If I'd gone the rig route, I'd have to worry about weight-painting new vertices, which would've cost me more time.