Onionskin or onion skin is a thin, lightweight, strong, often

translucent In the field of optics, transparency (also called pellucidity or diaphaneity) is the physical property of allowing light to pass through the material without appreciable scattering of light. On a macroscopic scale (one in which the dimensions a ...

paper Paper is a thin sheet material produced by mechanically or chemically processing cellulose fibres derived from wood, rags, grasses or other vegetable sources in water, draining the water through fine mesh leaving the fibre evenly distributed ...

. Though not made from

onion An onion (''Allium cepa'' L., from Latin ''cepa'' meaning "onion"), also known as the bulb onion or common onion, is a vegetable that is the most widely cultivated species of the genus ''Allium''. The shallot is a botanical variety of the onion ...

s, it superficially resembles their thin, papery skins. It was usually used with

carbon paper Carbon paper (originally carbonic paper) consists of sheets of paper which create one or more copies simultaneously with the creation of an original document when inscribed by a typewriter or ballpoint pen. History In 1801, Pellegrino Turri, ...

for typing duplicates in a

typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

, for permanent records where low bulk was important, or for

airmail Airmail (or air mail) is a mail transport service branded and sold on the basis of at least one leg of its journey being by air. Airmail items typically arrive more quickly than surface mail, and usually cost more to send. Airmail may be the ...

correspondence. It is typically 25–39 g/m² (9-pound basis weight in US units), and may be white or canary-colored. In the typewriter era, onion skin often had a deeply textured

cockle finish Cockle may refer to: * Cockle (bivalve), an edible, marine bivalve mollusc * '' Lolium temulentum'' (also cockle), an annual plant of the family Poaceae * Berwick cockle, a white-coloured sweet with red stripes * ''Cockle'', a codename for the fo ...

which allowed for easier erasure of typing mistakes, but other glazed and unglazed finishes were also available then and may be more common today. Onionskin paper is relatively durable and lightweight due to its high content of cotton fibers. Because of these attributes and its crispness when folding, onionskin paper is one of the best papers to use for toy

kite A kite is a tethered heavier than air flight, heavier-than-air or lighter-than-air craft with wing surfaces that react against the air to create Lift (force), lift and Drag (physics), drag forces. A kite consists of wings, tethers and anchors. ...

s and advanced

paper airplane A paper plane (also known as a paper airplane in American English or paper aeroplane in British English) is a toy aircraft, usually a glider made out of single folded sheet of paper or paperboard. A simple nose-heavy paper plane, thrown like ...

s. Paper airplanes made from onionskin paper tend to fly very well due to their low weight and high integrity once folded. Onionskin paper has also been regularly used in traditional cel

animation Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...

. Due to its translucency, it is used as a guide in drawing the frames between key-frames. This is a process that animators refer to as "in-betweening". The process of " onionskinning" is also used in digital animation where frames are represented by digital layers in a production.

References

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