Andoni Bastarrika, a multi-media artist from Spain’s Basque Country, has been getting a lot of attention for his ultra-realistic animal sculptures made almost exclusively with sand. Bastarrika has been entertaining beach-goers in his native Basque Country region for almost a decade now, but he only recently garnered international acclaim, after a photo of one of his sand sculptures – a life-size sitting bull – recently went viral on Reddit. People couldn’t stop talking about how lifelike the sculpture looked, from the subtle muscle definition to the hair-like sand detailing on its forehead. Soon photos of other of Bastarrika’s realistic sand animals started circulating on various social media networks. Read More »

Johannes Stötter is a world-renowned body-painter whose artworks are so incredibly realistic most people would never guess they are actually made up of people contorted in just the right positions and photographed from the right angle. We originally featured the magical body-paintings of Johannes Stötter back in 2014, when he made international news headlines with a mind-blowing project where he turned two of his models into almost perfect Ara macaws. sitting on a branch. He has been keeping busy since then, coming up with all sorts of stunning compositions, from a near-perfect frog made up of several painted human models, to a single person posing as perfectly-detailed butterfly sitting on a sunflower. But, as always, even knowing the secret of Stötter’s art, you still have to squint to make out the people hidden in the artworks. Read More »

Looking at English artist Zulf’s portraits, you get the sense that they’re really simplistic in nature. They’re not the most detailed, heck they sometimes just outline a woman’s face, but that’s just what makes them special. We’ve seen some truly mind-blowingly realistic portraits in the past, such as the masterpieces of Alena Litvin or those of Dylan Eakin; the works of London-based artist Zulf are nowhere near as detailed, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less magical, quite the opposite really! What makes these works unique is the concept of light being cast on part of the protagonists’ faces, which only reveals part of their visage, letting the viewer imagine the rest. Read More »

Ben Cullen, a former tattoo artist turned food artist extraordinaire, has been getting a lot of attention for his amazing cake illusions, which range from desserts disguised as fruits and vegetables, to treats shaped as realistic human hands. Looking at Ben Cullen’s mind-blowing cakes, you would think that he has been baking all his life, but in fact he only got into cakes five years ago, when a client he was tattooing showed him some cake decorating models she had made, which he found to be fascinating. He felt like he needed to give it a try himself, an as soon as he did, he became hooked. He had no previous experience or even the faintest interest in making cakes at the time, but as soon as he saw what other food artist were capable of, he felt like he needed to master the craft. Read More »

When it comes to ultra-realistic, hand-drawn or painted anamorphic illusions, you’d be hard pressed to find someone better than German artist Stefan Pabst. Just take a look at some of his work and you’ll be rubbing your eyes in amazement. Born in Russia, Stefan Pabst has been living in Germany since he was 15-year-old. In 2007, he started painting and drawing portraits, but quickly got bored with it and began looking for a way to somehow traverse the 2D border of a sheet of paper. As he continued to explore the limits of his talent, Pabst stumbled upon the art of anamorphic illusions, and he hasn’t looked back since. Although he continues to create commission portraits, the German artist has become much more known for his mind-blowing optical illusions. Read More »

Art collectors are going bananas over an artwork that essentially consists of a real banana duct-taped to a white wall at an art gallery, with some paying as much as $120,000 for it. Titled “Comedian”, the original artwork by Italian artist Maurizio Cattelan was on sale this week from Parisian gallery Perrotin, at the Art Basel festival in Miami. The first edition of the artwork was snatched up by a French art collector for the mind-blowing price of $120,000, and according to gallery owner Emmanuel Perrotin a second edition of Comedian was already sold for the same dizzying price. After successfully selling two bananas for a total of $240,000, the artist and the Perrotin gallery owner decided to to up the price of the third edition to $150,000. Read More »

Italian artist Marcello Barenghi has a very special skill – he can draw hyper-realistic versions of everyday objects, using commons drawing tools to make them look three-dimensional. Even as a child, Marcello Barenghi had a knack for hyper-realistic drawing, trying his hardest to imitate reality. At just 18 months he was drawing airplanes that had tridimensional moving propellers and vertical stabilizers, and as he grew up his skills only improved, winning him several drawing competitions. By the time he graduated high-school and started art school, Barenghi had developed his own hyper-realistic style and technique, but was advised by his art teachers to try his luck outside of Italy, where hyper-realism was more appreciated as an art form.  However, making a career out of drawing realistic versions of everyday things proved harder than he imagined. Read More »

On September 21, volunteers across the globe, from Thailand to Hawaii, gathered on their local beaches to clean up trash and make a powerful statement about the poor state of our environment? But what about volunteers with no dirty beaches to clean? Well, some of them got a bit of help from local authorities. Late last month, a South Korean mayor came under fire after revealing that he dumped a tonne of trash on a pristine beach just so hundreds of volunteers could clean it up the next day, in celebration of the International Coastal Cleanup Day. His office later apologized, saying that there wasn’t any trash for people to pick up, and that they only did it to “raise awareness about the seriousness of coastal waste”. Read More »

Zao, a Chinese artificial intelligence-powered app that allows users to swap faces with actors and other celebrities in videos and GIF images, has sparked serious privacy concerns due to how convincing the transformation can be. Uploaded to China’s iOS App Store last Friday, Zao became the number one downloaded app on the platform in only two days and looking at what it can do, it’s easy to see why. By using artificial intelligence, the app is able to take a simple picture of the user and superimpose it on to the face of any character in a video or GIF with truly breathtaking results. For example, one user claims it only took them under 8 seconds to swap faces with Leonardo DiCaprio and fulfil their dream of starring in blockbusters like Titanic. Read More »

German Lutz Langer once dreamed of destroying “Jewish domination” and praised the SS who during WW2 killed millions of Jews, but after a mind-blowing 10-year transformation, he now lives in Israel as a kippah-wearing Jew called Yonatan. Born in Berlin to Christian parents, Lutz Langer spent ten years as the member of a German Neo-Nazi group. He used to worship Hitler or Himler, listen to Neo-Nazi music and hate on Jews, whom he considered “the ultimate enemy, to be completely destroyed”. He and his anti-Semite friends used to either dispute the existence of the Holocaust or simply justify it as something necessary. He himself admits that there was a time when he thought the extermination of the Jews was “alright”. But not anymore; after a 10-year conversion process, Langer is now a model Jew and living proof that anyone can change. Lutz Langer was converted to Neo-Nazism when he was just 12-years-old, by his karate instructor. It all started with forbidden music, which was provocative for him and his young friends. It wasn’t something you could find in a music store, you had to know the right people, make copies and listen to in very private settings. Their instructor would invite them to his home and discuss the Holocaust over beer. Before he knew it, he was cutting his hair short, dressing up in black leather, doing the Nazi salute and interacting with all kinds of far-right extremists. Read More »

We’ve seen plants and insects posing as something else entirely in order to confuse their natural predators, but Macrocilix maia, a moth native to Southeastern Asia, takes mimicry to a whole new level by literally painting an entire scene on its wings. Looking at a Macrocilix maia moth, it’s impossible to ignore the scene painted on its wings – two flies feasting on some brown spots that could be mistaken for fresh bird droppings. It’s a pretty disgusting picture, and apparently we’re not the only ones who think so. Many of this moth’s predators tend to skip on insects feasting on bird droppings, associating them with potential disease, so the natural pattern acts as a defense mechanism for the otherwise helpless insect. And as if this visual representation of flies eating bird droppings wasn’t impressive enough, the moth reportedly also gives off a pungent odour that could be mistaken for actual bird droppings. Read More »

S Legend, a red and white Koi Carp bred in Japan became the most expensive live fish ever sold, after fetching a mind-blowing price of 203 million yen ($1.8 million), more than $1.3 million more than the previous record. The 101cm-long Koi Carp from the highly-regarded Kohaku variety was bought by a collector from Japan after a fierce bidding war  at the Saki Fish farm in the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The female carp won first prize at the prestigious All Japan Koi Show last year, and is expected to bag her second title this year, which greatly increased collectors’ interest. Fans and collectors of Koi carp are now expected to travel from all over the world to catch a glimpse of the most expensive fish ever sold. Read More »

An Indian education organization recently sparked controversy by introducing an optional engineering course that teaches students that modern inventions like aeronautics, batteries, as well as knowledge of gravity existed in India during the Vedic Age, thousands of years ago. Human Resource Development Ministry (HRD) decided to introduce into the country’s engineering curriculum a controversial book that makes all kinds of bombastic claims, from the fact that the Wright brothers didn’t really invent the airplane, to assertions that ancient Indian ‘scientists’ in the Vedic Age (1500 – 500 BCE) knew about gravity long before Isaac Newton. This book is seen as another attempt by Narendra Modi’s government to promote pseudoscience pushed by Hindu groups. Entitled Bharatiya Vidya Saar, the controversial book is set to be introduced as part of an optional credit course in engineering colleges and universities affiliated with the All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE). For some reason, the optional course, called Indian Knowledge Systems, will focus on Indian philosophical, linguistic and artistic traditions, as well as yoga and Indian perspective of modern scientific worldview. Those don’t sound like the kinds of things engineering courses should focus on, but wait until you hear what students will actually be taught. Read More »

Robert Förstemann’s massive thighs first broke the internet during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, when a photo of them next to those of fellow Olympic cyclist Andre Greipel made the other guy’s quads look ordinary, despite being incredibly muscular compared to those of the average man. Since then, the man aptly nicknamed “Quadzilla” has become famous for his humongous quads. Despite having won the World Championship in team sprint cycling in 2010 and getting numerous podium placements throughout his career, it’s safe to say that Robert Förstemann is known more for his massive thighs than his athletic achievements. It may not seem fair but that’s just how the world works. You may not care much about cycling, but when you see this guy’s quads, you just can’t ignore them. I mean, just look at the size of those things! Read More »

When it comes to metallic wire artworks, you’ll have a tough time finding a more talented artist than @tdaiki1216, a young Japanese art graduate who seems able to twist copper and brass wire into pretty much anything he sets his mind to, from sculptures that look like drawn manga, to slithering snakes and giant insects. @tdaiki1216, whose real name is Tsutamoto Dawiki, first made headlines in Japan two years ago, when his incredibly detailed wire sculptures imitating manga drawings went viral on Twitter. Fixed into square wooden blocks and placed against a white background, his artworks looked exactly like manga comics, even though they were actually twisted pieces of wire. Those were impressive enough, but @tdaiki1216 has stepped up his game even more over these last few years, and is now specializing in more complex wire sculptures, some of which are simply mind-blowing. Read More »