BEVERLY HILLS—It's no secret that some at AVN are major fans of 3D, and especially when that 3D involves sex. So when Taschen Publications announced that it was taking its 2006 edition of The Big Book of Breasts, adding more photos and making all of those beautiful bosoms 3D, some at AVN were jumping for joy.
But yes, The Big Book of Breasts 3D will make its official debut at 7 p.m. on Thursday, April 28 at the Taschen Store, 354 N. Beverly Drive in Beverly Hills, and its editor, Dian Hanson—you may know her from, among other publications, The History of Girly Magazines, The New Erotic Photography (with Eric Kroll), The Butt Book and others—will be on hand to discuss the book's contents and autograph copies.
"I'm a big fan of 3D," Hanson stated. "I've always liked it, and when I found out that you could convert ordinary photos, I have to say I was thrilled with that because I was thinking of all the implications. For me, I would like to make a book of the world's great photographs all converted to 3D."
Also on hand will be adult star Kelly Madison, whose massive mamms grace the cover of the new volume (and the photo accompanying this article) and, according to Hanson, "a bunch of Playboy girls as well."
An announcement of the book signing appeared in last week's LA Weekly, along with a couple of reproductions of 3D art, but Hanson told AVN she wasn't sure the Weekly did the book any favors.
"The pictures in the book definitely look better than the ones that showed up in the LA Weekly, and we've made some big posters, too, that came out surprisingly well," Hanson said. "As we know, you have to get the red and blue exactly the right shades as the red-and-blue glasses, and if it's off even a little, it doesn't work; you get ghosting and all of that. But the guy who did it, John Schnitzer, is a pro. He certainly took a personal interest in this topic, and lovingly rounded up those breasts, and that was the whole point of it: Not to make it those layers of flat imagery that we so often encounter in what passes for 3D, but to get real genuine roundness. And he also did it in such a way that the red and blue are very subtle. As you could see in the pictures in the Weekly, you don't have these huge patches of red and blue that make the picture unviewable without glasses. You can look at it and still enjoy the original photos without the glasses."
Indeed, all of the photos in the book were originally ordinary photographs that have been converted to achieve the 3D effect, and if done well, they can be nearly indistinguishable from photos shot in "native 3D."
"It was expensive to convert," Hanson admitted. "We did it fairly quickly, and we found, however, when you go through the book, we were originally thinking, okay, we'll do like 200 pictures and you'll have one on each page. But it's a big format book, it's a 12 by 12 inch book, and when you're just looking at that much altogether, it does start to overwhelm you. But it looks like a lot even to look at just the 120 3D photos in the book."
Depending on one's interests, visitors to the Taschen Store can also pick up one of Hanson's earlier efforts, The Big Penis Book 3D, another release debuting on Thursday, which is based on a 2D version which was released in 2008.
"The Big Penis Book is up there with The Big Book of Breasts as my two best-selling books of all time," Hanson explained, "and so we converted The Big Penis Book to 3D as well at the same time, and as of this moment today, The Big Penis Book 3D is outselling The Big Book of Breasts 3D. But they go back and forth on the bestseller list. A lot of straight guys bought the penis book, and some of them have told me, 'You know, you're going to think this is really strange but I bought this book.' They're just curious about it. Anyway, they're both in our Top 20 bestsellers."
Depending on sales of The Big Book of Breasts 3D and The Big Penis Book 3D, Hanson hopes to release more 3D volumes, some of which she hopes will consist of photographs (erotic, of course!) that were originally shot in 3D. But for now, 3D fans will just have to make do with the eye-poppingly converted jugs of such beauties as Kelly Madison, stripper extraordinaire Tempest Storm, as well as Russ Meyer beauty Kitten Natividad and soft-porn Euro star Uschi Digard.
Can we just say, "YOWZAH!"
