Oddity Central

Anamorphic Illusion Master Likes to Play with Our Minds
Eitaro – Japan’s Only Guy-sha
Ukrainian Artist Creates Incredibly Detailed Artworks from Sand and Seashells

Anamorphic Illusion Master Likes to Play with Our Minds

Posted: 07 Dec 2012 06:05 AM PST

Something about the image below is not what it seems, but you probably guessed that already. Why else would such a common looking photo be posted on a site like this, right? But can you guess what’s strange about it?

These are not the first time I post anamorphic illusions on OC, but I’m pretty sure they are the most realistic yet. The trick is actually very simple: YouTube artist Brusspup skews high resolution photos of ordinary objects, then films them from just the right angle to make them look incredibly realistic. So real, in fact, that even after he reveals the illusion, you still can’t wrap your head around how on Earth he makes seem look so real. If you just can’t believe your eyes, Brusspup was kind enough to provide the high-res images of the images in his video, so you can try out the trick for yourself. The slat-lined template must be printed on a transparency sheet and, Brusspup reminds us, if you're printing on an ink jet, you must use the transparencies that are made specifically for ink jet printers. Also, don't mess around with the size settings, or you'll probably end up with an optical illusion that is more baffling than it's supposed to be.

This is just the latest viral optical illusion from the artist. In the last year he has managed to garner quite a following on YouTube, after posting a series of impressive illusions and how-to videos.

Anamorphic Illusion Master Likes to Play with Our Minds was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Eitaro – Japan’s Only Guy-sha

Posted: 07 Dec 2012 05:25 AM PST

Three years ago, Eitaro lost his mother, a dedicated geisha, to cancer. Ever since then, he and his sister have been carrying on her legacy, running a geisha house and overseeing a group of six other geishas.

26-year-old Eitaro first performed as a female dancer at age 10, at one of his mother’s geisha parties. He started taking dance lessons at the age of 8 and when he was just 11-years-old, he performed at Japan’s national theater. He was clearly a natural geisha, and a trivial thing like gender wasn’t going to stop him from following his calling. Eitaro's mother, a skilled and charismatic geisha, dedicate her life to reviving Tokyo’s geisha culture, after the last geisha house had closed its doors during the 1980′s Japanese real estate bubble. As a boy, Eitaro grew up watching her perform, and just like his sister, Maika, he was fascinated by her elegance. But, three years ago, they lost their mother to cancer, and it became their responsibility to carry on her legacy. Now, Eitaro is the master of an 'okiya,' a geisha house in Tokyo's Omori port district, and together with his sister and a groups of six other geishas, entertain customers at geisha parties.

Photo: Tumblr

There are other male geishas who dress up in men’s kimono’s and assist the women by performing as drummers and singing along with them, but Eitaro is the only male geisha who takes on a female role. As odd as that may be, it only helped Eitaro’s popularity grow and now his geisha house performs frequently for private geisha parties, public stage performances and public relations events.

Photo: QQ

A century ago, there were around 80,000 geishas in Japan, but the country’s changing economy and corporate entertainment policies made them unaffordable, so today the number of working geishas is estimated to be around 1,000.

via Daily Mail

Eitaro – Japan’s Only Guy-sha was originally posted at OddityCentral.com

Ukrainian Artist Creates Incredibly Detailed Artworks from Sand and Seashells

Posted: 07 Dec 2012 02:18 AM PST

Svetlana Ivanchenko is a talented Ukrainian artist who uses overlooked natural materials like sand, seashells, quartz, tree roots and tree bark to create wonderful mosaics that look almost painted by hand.

Born and raised in Yalta, on the shores of the Black Sea, Ivanchenko was always fascinated by the abundance of natural materials that surrounded her. She studied at the Crimean Art School, under the supervision of renowned artist Sergei Bokaeva, and later graduated from the Glukhivskiy Pedagogical Institute. The artist currently based in the city of Dnepropetrovsk uses a variety of sand, shells, quartz and tree parts to create amazing works of art inspired by her place of birth and the warmth of the female body. It’s hard to believe, but every little piece of material used to create the artworks is placed by hand, and no coloring other than that of the composing elements is used. As Pinar from My Modern Metropolis notes, Svetlana “merges the various textures and colors brilliantly, making it difficult to imagine the frames being made of anything else.” Her natural masterpieces have been exhibited in international galleries, and many of them reside in the private collections of connaisseurs in Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Estonia and the Dominican Republic.