The dragons Dimitrios shared with me were created in honor of a famous writer and math-o-phile, Martin Gardner. Gardner is a hero among mathematicians, even though he himself was not trained nor employed as a mathematician.
What's so cool about these dragons? Dimitrios captures their effect well. He says,
The amazing thing about these dragons is that while the way that they are made is giving us the feeling of real dragon dolls and while we would expect that the dolls would be still, as the video proceeds and we see the dragons from different angles, we notice that the dragons' heads are following us. Initially this seems to be completely strange, but at the end of the video the cameraman shows how the dolls are actually constructed and we see that the heads are inside - out. This seems to be just an illusion but in reality this is the magic of Projective Geometry.How does this work? This is an example of "reverse perspective" -- the canvas isn't flat. And the dragons' noses don't jut out toward you, they fold back away from you (shaped like a spoon). But you're used to seeing the nose close to you, so when you move your eyes, the head doesn't move the way you expect; it seems the dragon head follows you.
Other artists who use this technique are Roy Lichtenstein, Patrick Hughes, and whoever created this "Forward/backward" cube. But thanks to the Martin Gardner disciples and fanatics, you can make your own Dragon! In fact, Dimitrios printed out this version of a dragon and gifted it to me, and now I have a beast watching me wherever I go in my office!
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Addendum: (September 2015)
Another former Math and Art student, Emily Meneghin, sent me this related video. This one contains a life-size dragon! (Although the video here calls it a "T-Rex"):
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