Making a photorealistic painting is pretty darn impressive. It takes a tremendous attention to detail and the ability to be able to perfectly recreate that detail in another medium that isn’t necessarily conducive to producing facsimile. Of course, when you’re dealing with paint or pencils, you’re only working in two dimensions, relying on shadows and other depth-creating devices to encourage a sense of realism. When you actually have to work in three dimensions, though, that presents a whole new set of challenges. That’s what makes these realistic cat portraits all the more impressive (via The Kids Should See This).

WakuNeco creates these little masterpieces, which look like (not to get too macabre) you sliced the face off a real live cat. The process is called needle felting, which involves using a barbed needle to interlock felt fibers together. You can see the process from start to finish in the video above: The creator begins with a pretty bare form of a cat face made of felt, and even just a minute into the video, you get a result that is very recognizably a cat. Then comes the detail work, and after more poking, prodding, trimming, and shaping, the portrait is framed. And frankly, it’s pretty unbelievable how realistic it looks. If you’re more into gray cats, here’s another video:

Is this one of the most impressive artistic achievements you’ve ever seen? What other art things have blown you away? Head down to the comments and let us know what you think!

Featured image: わくねこ羊毛フェルト/YouTube