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Artist uses 3D printing to create anamorphic animals

Anamorphosis is an effect you’ve likely seen before but not known the name of. It involves abusing perspective, and sometimes mirrors, to create unique works of art where you likely won’t know exactly what you’re looking at if you’re not looking in the right way.

You can see it illustrated in this drawing of a chair that is distorted and rather odd on its own, but looks normal once reflected in a mirror.

Artist Richard Vigniel decided to use this effect in 3D printing after being inspired by the work of Jonty Hurwitz who uses this liberally in his pieces.

Vigniel tells us that he struggled to get the idea to work due to lack of specific information he could find, but settled on adapting a simple frog model on Thingiverse.

Using Blender the frog was modified to work with mirror anamorphosis, specifically using a cylindrical mirror in the software to make it work.

Printing of the frog took around five hours to complete making something that is rather lengthy at 15 X 9 X 2 centimetres, but looks normal once reflected.

For the “mirror” a chrome cylinder from the hardware store was used which was then polished to give off a proper reflection.

Happy with how the frog turned out, Vigniel decided to try his hand turning a few other creatures into 3D printed anamorphic displays.

At the time of writing you can now find a similar works of art done for rubber duck, a dragon, and the internet favourite of a cat.

All of these new prints followed the same format of the frog by remixing existing models in Blender and then printing them out at around 4 to 6 centimetres tall, and 12 to 18 centimetres wide.

Those looking to make their own versions of these pieces can find the files available to download for free from Thingiverse. The frog, rubber duck, dragon and cat are all available right now, and we suggest checking out Vigniel’s list of Thingiverse uploads should more be added in the future.

For the cylindrical mirror or chrome cylinder something one-third the width of the print is recommended. For the example print on this page a cylinder with five centimetres diameter was used.

Previous 3D Prints of the Day:

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