Stereo drawings

My fascination with 3D graphics started in primary school. I had book of red/blue anaglyph images. I quickly figured out how they worked and how I could make my own.

I created my own anaglyph images based on simple perspective drawing of basic geometric shapes, such as cubes and pyramids. I was pretty happy with them, but I disliked that glasses were required to view them.

In order to create 3D images that didn’t require special glasses, I developed with a few techniques for viewing and creating stereo images. I learnt to stare past the paper to focus on stereo pairs and I used tracing paper and mirrors to help me draw 3D pictures.

My favourite technique was to draw overlapping line drawings of pyramids. It was quick and easy to do with a mathematical stencil ruler. I would just draw slightly offset squares in semi-regular grids in order to create a sequence of pyramids that burst out from the page.

I’ve started revisting some of these old techniques with my favourite vector drawing program, and I want to integrate more of this style of art into my other artistic works.

Here’s an example I threw together today (click image for full-size version):

You should be able to view this image in 3D much like a regular (computer generated) autostereogram (ie. look past the image). Don’t expect anything fancy though!