These people figured out some way of doing an incredibly distorted drawing so that when they stood a reflective cylinder (cylinder mirror) in the middle of it, the reflection showed the picture as intended. One of these is of Mission San Rafael, the exact view you’d see if I tilted my Nikon digital camera up – Escher portrait lyes inside this photo. Don’t forget that other photos are inside of this post. Just click on the title to go inside. This image below is Istvan Orovitz’s Anamorphic Art. It is called Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island. At first glance, the image looks like a shipwreck on a weird-looking island. When a cylinder is put on the print, the reflection looks like Jules Verne!
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One word. Totally Awesome. Oops.
If you can draw portraits and other things well, you can do this by first placing the reflecting cylinder on a designated spot on your paper and creating a drawing while looking at the cylinder to see where the pencil goes. Takes some time to get used to, but for any drawing artist it is definitely something to explore.
quite a thing! …maaan
I’m not sure if the difference here is that a digital camera is (might be?) involved, but these have been around for many many years. I first became aware of them from an issue of World Magazine (National Geographic’s kids magazine) in the late 70s-early 80s, and they portrayed them in an antiqued fashion. They also had projects to make your own, and while some (like these) used a cylinder, there are others that are drawn to use a mirrored cone.
Done in history to hide allegiences with individuals or groups. The painting can look like a landscape, but it can be a portrait of a king, or leader.
Awesome! This isn’t actually new though. There was a computer book or magazine from the 80’s that discussed this, the mathematics, and gave some sample code that could convert normal coordinates to cylindrical ones for drawing these programatically. I wish I could remember exactly where I saw it.
That’s so genius, maybe some day I’ll try my hand at those!
Wow, that’s amazing!
Who did these drawings? Where did this story come from?
These are usually called anamorphic images, although the name is also applied to other forms of distortion.
It is historically famous as a way of hiding a picture of Bonnie Prince Charlie. Some striking modern images by the Hungarian artist Orovitz cann be found at:
http://members.aol.com/webcarlos2/Optical/Artists/Orovitz.htm
Instructions for making your own, and a link to some software to do it for you are at:
http://www.mathsyear2000.org/explorer/anamorphic/cylindrical-mirror-anamorphosis/
For other forms of anamorphic distorion, try this page as a lead-in to more fascinating examples:
http://graphicfacilitation.blogs.com/pages/2005/06/anamorphic_pave.html
Sorry, my browser wouldn’t give me “Preview” but went straight through when I hit “Post” and found a spelling mistake simultaneously.
Very nice effect!
You can do that in Photoshop
This is better than the time I saw the image of the Taco Bell chihuahua reflected off a kosher bagel dog.
Wow. Jim is so amazing! From Photoshop he can create an image with a physical glass cylinder on it. He can create physical matter from digital software. I don’t remember that option in Photoshop.
I had a Rick Wakeman (of Yes) vinyl that had one of these on the cover – I think it was the album Journey to the Centre of the Earth.
The album came with a flat square of silver plastic to make the tube with and if you put the tube in place and looked down the centre there was another image reflected on the inside.
I had forgotten about that album, I hope I can get a CD of it!
Update – Found out tha RW album was ‘No Earthly Connection’ and I probably wont find it on CD but can get a vinyl copy from Amazon for about £50!! (Ouch)
I think I’ll be digging out my old vinyls and crossing my fingers!
Anyone with an MP3 to share? Write me at Rolf@ the provided web address, pls. (Sorry to go off topic)
W . o . W !!!!!!!!!!!!!
very nice think il have a go
wah its nice but hard to build ………….
excellent work
complex, skillful, not entirely impossible, but very well done. wkd!
great job !!!!!
When linking to a larger image, the image really should be LARGER!
JIm ur a dikg#head these kind of drawings take a long time to produse and you simply say you can make them in potoshop well can u do 1 den??
very impressive but very confusing
It can be done a bit easier this way…
Take a cone first, paint any image on it.
Roll the cone on a paper so paint sticks to the paper, it will rotate as if a car turns if one wheel is slower and other is faster when turning…
Then take a cylinder of same radius as cone’s base side…
You will see the same image drawn on the paper…
xXx even if he can’t do one, at least he can spell.
Jim, Jim,JIm, I think what you can do in photoshop is turn a regular photo or drawing INTO a cylinder…this is quite different my naive little friend
lame
these pictures remind me of a young John Stamos or early enrique inglesias, as the once world rnound backstreet boys said, I never wanna here you say I wat it that way, which reflects the meaning of these pictures in a whole
these thins r alrite but u need loads more 2 impress me!
twould be tough to do
oh nice!!!!!!!!!!
My Co worker ‘little’ kevin thinks your work is AWESOME!
Though we have alot of work to do and need his help, so can you take down your site for the next couple of hours so we can get back to work?
Thanks
Hello, I were moved with this image greatly at this time that was a Japanese
THIS BLOWS YOU A-HOLES!
um its a cup.
Take care of it and keep it on the road!
i did this in school b4 and to Dmitriy Chernoshey: ummm, no its not like that. u draw your picture on a numbered graph paper. then u use a special stretched-out graph paper and copy your picture on2 it and make sure the numbers correspond. it may be confusing now but if u see it in person you’ll understand.
Interesting, but navigation system is a little bit confusing
I can do this with any picture in photoshop send me a link here and I will do it with yours. It is cool and has been around since the 17th century. Now we can do it with a digital image.
can you contact me garZon?
There’s one on Rick Wakemans “No Earthly Connection” LP,
Snazzy “Free Gift”
woah, cool
To Hai
Well, I do not require graph papers to draw, I use my eyes and the reflective object. Just like Futureboy here. Although your method seems logical, it is not the only one. I sometimes do fun things while faux painting for customers and one of the general methods used is “tromp d’oeil”, or “fool the eye”, which includes effects presented here. I recently painted a small tabletop with a portrait of a customer’s family member visible on a cylindrical chrome vase, it later became his birthday gift. Pretty expensive one for them, too, I might add.
An easy way to do this would be to get a string, tie it to the pencil, and put a drawing pin into where the centre of the cylinder would be, ad tie the other end of the string to that, and then you have a long range compass. Then draw all your horizontal lines with your compass and the vertical lines would just be straight. Then, you put the cylinder where the drawing pin was, and there you have it! though i dont know how to do the curves… but at least you can draw pic 4…
that is just weird. i dont think i have ever seen that before
i have to admit this site is amazing it is phenominal that people do this andhow accurately they did it
This is a great mix of distortion and mirror usage. As you can tell that just certain details had to be added to make the face show up on the cylinder while also making the original picture make sense. This is a great work of art and there has definately been some good brains working here.