Dain Fagerholm's incredible animated GIFs

Dain Fagerholm creates animated GIF art similar to traditional stereo 3D photos.

Pictured here is Daydreamer. Other favorites of mine include Four creatures in a room and "Seven Headed Creature".

Dain's latest, Creature in Cube with Gem looks anagyphic as well as stereoscopic (but I'm not sure if it is)! [via Illusion 360]

• [zachstronaut]

  Fantastic.  What’s really interesting about this parallax/jitter 3d technique is that it works with one eye closed.  The human brain is extremely good at turning parallax information into depth information.

• [Don Hosek]

  I think you mean anaglyphic, not alaglyphic.

• [David L. Cooper]

  How does he make these?? I’m guessing the pen scribble texture is mapped onto a virtual 3D form, then “photographed” from two (or three?) angles… right? Brilliant, in any case.

  • [mgschwan]

    He is definitely using some form of depthmap you can see that at the head of the tallest creature http://illusion.scene360.com/wp-content/themes/sahara-10/submissions/2012/03/dain_02.gif

    Some software out there creates the different views by shifting the pixels according to the depth values without actually going the whole path of mapping it onto a 3D scene and taking an image from differen viewpoints

    for example http://www.swell3d.com/2008/07/turn-2d-painting-into-3d-anagl.html

    if you have already two images that are shifted along the x axis of the image plane you could software like this

    media.zero997.com/pywiggle/index.html

    Michael

    • [Ibn Battuta]

      Fagerholm or Albertus Seba? 
      http://www.flickr.com/photos/bibliodyssey/3616688842/sizes/l/
      Sorry, I don’t like artists who forget to quote their sources…

  • [formosaman]

    I don’t have the links, but I’ve read it’s much easier than that. I think he just produces one image and then uses a program to duplicate it and add this effect.

• [CH]

  Absolutely amazing! Usually these kind of “3d” pictures don’t do much for me… the jiggling is way too annoying, but these are just perfect!

  And yeah, I got a sudden urge of “need to find out how to make this!!!!”

  • [CH]

    And… tadaa… at least one way to do it:
    http://3dvision-blog.com/2181-converting-a-2d-image-into-a-stereoscopic-3d-image-with-photoshop/

• [zachstronaut]

  Fun fact: Does your laptop have a camera on the front?  Take a picture of yourself and the room behind you.  Now, being careful not to move yourself too much, scoot your laptop over only about an inch.  Take another photo.  Now create a GIF that toggles between these two images really fast.  BOOM… instant glasses free 3D version of you and your room.

  Bummer… attached GIFs get converted. Here it is:

  http://www.zachstronaut.com/lab/zach-anim.gif

  (click the link, not the broken image below)

• [CognitiveDissident]

  These animated GIFs are great!

  After watching a myriad of animated GIF stories
  (and this: Darth Vader wheezing for ten hours: http://boingboing.net/2012/03/15/darth-vader-wheezing-for-ten-h.html ),
  I wish that there was a GIF/MNG/APNG with sound!
  (yes, I know it would be a “talkie”. A compact, infinite “talkie” movie.)
  (Imagine, Darth Vader wheezing for infinity!)

  Because there’s just not enough sound on the internet.

• [Evan G.]

  These “3D” photos don’t do anything for me except make my head hurt, and annoy me at being a jittery animation.  Is there a way that I’m supposed to be looking at them? 

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Drunk.

  • [Thomas Zaraat]

    Agreed! These things tend to make me nauseous.

• [Itsumishi]

  A friends band got an artist to draw a 3d picture for their record cover a few years back. I was extremely impressed with the artwork and asked if they knew how the artist had gone about it. 

  In this instance it had all been done by hand. The artist wore a pair of red and green glasses and literally did every line by hand on the page. Apparently a lot of taking the glasses on and off was involved. I was flabbergasted and still am and it makes the already impressive artwork even more impressive! However I guess this is how all old 3d drawings were made.

  http://a8.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-snc1/6923_133468809094_7224924094_2404927_7834971_n.jpg 

  If anyone is interested the band is called Useless Children. Their music is angry. Their singer/drummer is one angry, angry sounding woman.

• [william beaty]

  Shoot some footage of distant scenery passing by your airplane window.

  Open two small adjacent windows and play two copies of your video footage simultaneously

  Pause one of the players for awhile, so the camera viewpoints aren’t identical

  Cross your eyes to view 3D scene in hyperstereo.  (Swap player window positions if crosseye gives inside-out 3D.)

• [Tim H]

  Some of the blogs I’ve seen have been attributing this effect as an invention of the artist, and I’ve seen other folks elsewhere claim to have been the first to use it. 

  I want to go on record to say that the artist Ken Jacobs has been creating an effect like this since the 60s or 70s.  He has uses two film projectors set up side by side playing the same film, the images layered one over the other.  In front of the two projecting lenses spins a handmade shutter system which only allows one image at a time to show through.  He advances the films in and out of sync, creating the amazing 3D effect (along with others) that you see in the animated GIFs. 

  I don’t know if there is a long tradition to this sort of thing, but my understanding from lecture from Jacobs is that he created it.  Unless I remember incorrectly.