Nope, it's not a giant bottle of Coke, it's a very realistic 3-D chalk drawing of one!
Julian Beever is an amazing artist who takes advantage of the way the brain perceives things visually to create some astounding artwork. He calls them "Anamorphic illusions"........ drawn in a special distortion in order to create an impression of 3 dimensions when seen from one particular viewpoint, and he's been doing this type of artwork for about 10 years. (He renders such realistic and remarkable work, it's tempting to lay down my own art materials in surrender).
The human brain works out our 3D peceptions of the world from the two dimensional light patterns that fall onto our retina at the back of the eye.
We assume that textures will fade as they go farther away, parallel lines will converge in the distance somewhat, and that the closer an object is, the larger it seems to appear. Julian Beever's art takes advantage of a knowledge of these processes, so when photographed or viewed from a particular angle, the visual system's built-in processes are fooled, producing a false sense of depth.
When viewed from an alternate angle, the illusion is brokem-down, and you can see how the illusion was created. More examples of Beever's very impressive eye candy!
