Rice paddy crop art of the year

It's the season of rice paddy art in Japan and Pink Tentacle has collected some exquisite examples! The massive artworks are grown through the strategic arrangement of rice plants of varying hues. From Pink Tentacle:

The largest and finest work is grown in the Aomori prefecture village of Inakadate, which has earned a reputation for its agricultural artistry. This year the enormous pictures of Napoleon and a Sengoku-period warrior, both on horseback, are visible in a pair of fields adjacent to the town hall there.

Rice paddy crop art (2009) (Thanks, Tara McGinley!)

[#1 posted by Sproogle, July 8, 2009 10:40 AM]

COOL.

[#2 posted by NidSquid, July 8, 2009 11:45 AM]

Now that's a wonderful thing!

[#3 posted by Lobster, July 8, 2009 12:33 PM]

How come no one blames aliens for THESE? ;)

[#4 posted by Anonymous, July 8, 2009 1:00 PM]

This makes me think of a project led by Canadian sculptor Joe Fafard of horse sculpted in a field that evolved with the seasons/crops.

http://eyeris.ca/pages/horse.html

[#5 posted by Drewkulele, July 8, 2009 2:17 PM]

I see stuff like this and, sadly, in this age of Photoshop, I tend to be very suspicious of it, and, frankly, these look fake to me.

[#6 posted by calabanos, July 8, 2009 5:32 PM]

There's no reason to spoil this by claiming Photoshop. The projects wouldn't be that hard given time, organization, and experience. It would be marvelous if these images inspired others to explore large scale mural projects.

[#7 posted by nocchimochi, July 8, 2009 5:56 PM]

Inakadate is a few hours drive from my house. These are grown every year and are designed to be optimally viewed from a certain perspective- the balcony of town hall. Quite impressive in person. It saddens me that somebody immediately thinks of Photoshop upon seeing these photos; they must see clone tooling and gradients everywhere.

[#8 posted by Darren Garrison, July 8, 2009 6:45 PM]

But look at the pixels!

[#9 posted by Brainspore, July 8, 2009 6:58 PM]

@Drewkulele: Photoshop fakes usually don't show the same scene from several angles, including closeups.

Speaking as a graphic artist I can assure you that faking all the photos in that link would have been almost as hard as doing it for real.

[#10 posted by oheso, July 8, 2009 8:00 PM]

'Inaka,' datte ... (?)

[#11 posted by dross1260, July 9, 2009 7:06 AM]

I blame the wallabies

[#12 posted by Anonymous, July 9, 2009 4:36 PM]

I second the wallabies.