P3D Amazing Card Escher 3D Conversions

[abram klooswyk <abram.klooswyk@xxxxxx>]

Recently Steve Berezin announced on S3d that he offers Escher 
3D Viewer cards. (S3d 1035,25 Feb 2000)

>>These cards are imported from Europe and printed with the 
cooperation of the M. C. Escher Foundation.  They offer 3D 
conversions by Pixel Product Conversions in a pop-up postcard 
format complete with lens and a mailing envelope.  
(...) 9 different cards are available << 

Steve shows anaglyphs of the Escher 3D pictures on his site, 
see: http://www.berezin.com/3d/escher.htm 

"Europe" is a whole continent, but the activities relating to 
these cards and conversions are all Dutch, that means confined 
to Holland, or more accurately: the Netherlands. 

M. C. Escher (1898 - 1972) was a Dutch graphic artist  
(biography at http://users.erols.com/ziring/escher_bio.htm). 

The 3D conversion were done by Coen Holten, who is the present 
chairman of the Nederlandse Vereniging voor Stereofotografie 
(Dutch Stereoscopic Society). On his Web site 
(http://www.stereogallery.com/sg01/sg100.html) he says: 
"During my education as an industrial design engineer I fell 
in love with stereoscopy. I started my company 'Pixel Product 
Visualisations' to produce computer aided stereoscopic product 
presentations. With several 3D-friendly companies I now 
develop improved stereoscopic products. Examples are 'The 
Amazing Card' and '3D-Eye Books'."

It is a well know fact (in the Dutch club...) that Coen uses 
techniques which partly were developed by the secretary of 
the Dutch club, Harry Bulk. 
Harry has done all kind of 3D conversions. He has a business 
site at http://www.3D-conversion.com/  (notice place of the 
hyphen), where a Vincent van Gogh conversion can be seen, and 
a stereo picture Neil Armstrong _didn't_ take on the moon. 
But Harry's private site is also interesting: 
http://home.wxs.nl/~bulk0010
It shows a 3D conversion of Elvis Presley and of scenes of 
the movies "Back to the future" and "Titanic", and some Tintin 
cartoons.

The Amazing Card company is based again in the Netherlands,  
Jaap Boon, another Dutch clubmember, is the Amazing man, his 
site: http://www.amazingcard.nl  shows several other 3D cards. 
Jaap Boon and Coen Holten were busy selling the 3D cards at 
the trade fair of the Lindau I.S.U. Congress last September. 
The cards resemble some other cardboard stereoviewers with 
plastic lenses, but the foldable sleeve pop-up design permits 
focusing by squeezing. Inside the stereopictures are printed 
at about 3.5 x 5 cm, sharp and without grid.

Escher 2D drawings can be seen on many web sites, but the 
copyright stays with the Escher family (it is transferred by 
the Escher Foundation to Cordon Art). Not all sites respect 
this, I believe, I'm not sure about: 
http://members.xoom.com/mhgug/escher.html, but I like that 3D 
Escher conversion too ("Three Worlds", by Michael, "mhgug", 
announced in P3d 3177, more than a year ago, but fortunately 
still there, I hope we will to see more work by Michael). 

I have mentioned the 3D conversions of Escher's "Reptiles", 
"Drawing Hands" and "Ascending and Descending". In most of the 
other six conversions the 3d dimension also adds to the 
effect, in my opinion. In the "Puddle" the effect of looking 
through a water surface is similar to the "Three Worlds", 
converted by Michael. The "Balcony" protrudes even more 
shameless than on Escher's 2D version, and the bonded heads 
of "Bond of Union" are more in space than the originals.

Recently there was a somewhat hilarious Photo-3D discussion on 
the stereo window. Look at Escher's "stereo window" in the
"Still Life and Street" conversion.

My next wishes for Escher 3D conversions are: the "Belvédère",
2D see: http://www.escher.freeserve.co.uk/escher/BELVEDERE.jpg 
(as said before), but especially the "Print Gallery", 2D see: 
http://www.escher.freeserve.co.uk/escher/PRINT_GALLERY.jpg

(For some reason I don't understand this last print is not 
counted as an "impossible figure", but impossible it is.)

Abram Klooswyk