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Does this character fan art from The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls invoke fairy godmother magic, or is there more to this trick than meets the eye?

A Korean artist by the name of H13 Woomin recently tweeted an illustration of Mayu Sakuma from the popular app-turned-anime series The Idolmaster Cinderella Girls.

▼ A sample of official Mayu artwork

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H13 Woomin’s illustration, shown below, is a great piece of fan art, and certainly better than anything I could ever hope to achieve, but why exactly are netizens raving over it? Go ahead and give it a click (or two)!

Notice anything different? That’s right! Mayu’s face suddenly goes from super cute to suuuper creepy!

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While it might look like magic, Woomin’s illustration is likely based on a trick used by doujin artist and Twitter user Grande, whose original color-changing image made waves on the social networking site last month.

▼ “Her tights change from white to black.” (Be sure to give this two clicks, too!)

Grande was kind enough to explain the mechanics behind the illustration’s illusion, likely inspiring other artists to create their own versions of the trick.

▼ “After adding a transparent layer to the tights and then saving the image file in PNG format to maintain its transparency, when you upload it to Twitter, the transparent background will turn to black, which is why the tights appear to be a light shade of black when you click on the image.”

Because Twitter defaults transparent backgrounds to black when you click on them, your mileage may vary if you try it out on other social networking sites, but in the future these types of images may possibly become just as popular to tweet as memes and gifs.

By the way, if you’re a fan of Cinderella Girls, be sure to check out these elegant umbrellas inspired by the series.

Source: Twitter/@chawoo1357, Twitter/@gggrande (1, 2) via Togech
Top image: Twitter/@chawoo1357 (edited by RocketNews24)
Insert image: Smartphone Game Matome Antenna

More Idolm@ster goodness:

Traditional Japanese umbrellas feature designs inspired by The Idolm@ster Cinderella Girls

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