The Art of Stereoscopy: Chris Sickels

I’m so fortunate to welcome Chris Sickels, aka Red Nose Studio, to the Stereoscopy Blog. He’s an Indiana-based artist who creates 3-D illustrations and stop-motion animations with what’s at arms reach in his studio, making his images come to life with textures, light and elbow grease.

I first happened upon his work when I saw and ordered his stereocard set ‘Displacement: A Stereographic Journey’, which has been a successful Kickstarter project in 2020, and I was utterly blown away (you can still purchase these sets – please see below). The 3-D images themselves are just beautiful – the world he’s created through his artwork and storytelling, the compositions and the depth, with the stereoscopic 3-D allowing you to be completely immersed with the characters. The presentation of the set as a finishing touch, with all the attention to detail, just takes it to another level!

I’m going to share a link to a Facebook post, because I love that Chris uses stereoviews of his artwork as a portfolio to show clients, and also embed a YouTube video to show Chris’ 2021 reel of his beautiful creations:

You can read more about Chris and his background in a great 2015 interview with Laura-Beth Cowley for Skwigly.

I asked Chris if he would introduce Displacement: A Stereographic Journey and explain his background in stereoscopy, which you will find below.

By Chris Sickels

The story is called Displacement, it’s about moving on by choice, circumstance and persistence. The characters are a restless Traveler, a resolute Woodsman and a resilient Owl. It is told through a sequence of 17 stereographs.

I was introduced to stereographs when I worked on early pitch development for the feature film The Little Prince. Ever since that project I have wanted to explore telling a story through a series of stereographs and DISPLACEMENT is the story that felt like the right fit. Being that I work in analog 3D, where everything is built by hand, staged, lit and photographed in my garage studio, stereographs feel like a perfect complement to my dimensional worlds.