Whenever we stumble upon photos of so called street art or 3d chalk drawings on the web we feel like we're seeing something that is both incredibly stunning and kind of - unreal.

Unreal? Unfortunately yes. Large format 3D chalk drawings cannot be perceived by a human observer on the same ground level. They are meant for the camera only.

Let's hear independant 3d street graphic artist Julian Beever talk about the limitations of traditional 3D street art in the video to the right.

And afterwards, let Shapeshifter Media provide you with solutions to deal with those limitations.

Criteria for successful floor designs

public 3d street art chalk drawing

Street art today

Made by looking through the camera lens

Today's 3d street art is created by manually setting up an inital outline for the artwork on the floor at a single site.

This requires either a whole team of people of which one person would constantly look through the camera and instruct the others on how to align the outlines to the camera view - or a constant going back and forth for an individual artist. The outline is then filled with details which once again, must strictly be aligned to the the camera lens.

The overall process from start to finish takes several days for a single site, must be carried out in dry weather conditions and access to the area must be fully restricted at all times.

The human eye can only focus on a certain area

Bad news - we have two eyes

A photo camera has one single lens - it can only see in 2D. No stereoscopic information can be captured with a standard photo.

A human observer on the other hand is looking at the 3d street art with his two eyes, thus seeing the street and the environment in a stereoscopic manner.

With is single lens, the camera will "flatten out" whatever it captures and puts everything on a two-dimensional plane, which is then seen on a two-dimensional photo print or - a two-dimensional computer screen. Everything seems to appear right.

Our eyes in contrary can only and will always focus on a certain limited area of whatever is front of us and give us a three-dimensional impression of our surroundings unless, we close one eye.

As a result, people standing on the same ground level on which a large 3d chalk drawing is painted will not see the dramatic 3D effect of common street art, the way it´s presented through a photograph with a special lens, at all.

Solutions

Shapeshifter Media provides 3D floor applications for all scenarios that provide the desired 3D effect for the human eye

1. 3D street art landscapes for both the camera and the human eye

For very large floor areas that should be fully covered with 3D effects, we provide special 3D scenes that are precisely calculated with our own software, so both the human eye and any camera can fully enjoy the 3D imagery.

2. 3D event floor graphics

A special mode in our software allows for the creation of event-specific 3D floor scenes that are perfect for photo shootings and can cover multiple surfaces at the same time, thus enabling giant 3D scenes even in narrow spaces.

3. Eye-friendly 3D FloorPosters

All of our 3D FloorPosters for advertising, signage and safety measures are calculated to perfectly match the human eye, thus giving you the expected 3D look at all times.

Professional solutions and examples for all scenarios

See how our clients successfully use our 3D FloorPosters with over 100 examples in our 3d floor gallery

Comparison chart

	Classic Street Art	Shapeshifter 3D landscapes	Shapeshifter 3D event graphics	Shapeshifter 3D FloorPosters
applicable indoors	by restricting access to the entire area
applicable outdoors	only in dry weather conditions and by restricting access to the entire area
applicable on all surfaces
applicable in small spaces
observers can follow creation of image
installation staff	artist team	anyone	anyone	anyone
time for installation	several days per site	a few seconds	a few seconds	a few seconds
usable in all weather conditions
walkable	shoes will rub off paint
movable
re-usable
cleanable
removable	must scrub floor and clean off residue	instantly	instantly	instantly
3D look for camera
3D look for human eye
similar multi-site use
additional content (branding, website, qr-code etc.)