Painting reveals interior of Bruegel's Tower of Babel

Artist and animator Katsuhiro Otomo of Akira fame, with collage artist KAsuke Kawamura, painted this view of the inside of the Tower of Babel, a perfectly fascinating pastiche of Bruegel's original, below.

Eric Stimson reports:

... Kawamura, who colored the painting to closely match the original. Kawamura says that he used over 25,000 layers in his editing software, "the most I've ever done in my life." He also had to carefully set the correct perspective for each brick. In the end, he doesn't even recognize his own work.

Otomo visited the original painting in Rotterdam's Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen so he could study it carefully in detail. He even stumped the resident curators with his questions. For instance, they weren't sure where the tower's entrance was, but Otomo thinks he found it. He also noticed a river flowing into the tower and in the background, so he included it in his cutaway.

Modeling the Library of Babel in Sketchup.