Well, most of them. Making a billiard ball tell the future is no easy trick, even for its inventor, the son of a clairvoyant. It takes a specially designed 20-sided die in a proprietary liquid held in a sealed canister and suspended on two shock absorbers. To get it all rolling, we weld everything together using sound waves — yes, sound waves — so you get a perfect sphere with no exposed fasteners.
Philadelphia-based artist and illustrator Anhia Zaira Santana, known professionally as “Distortedd,” uses her wild imagination to recreate the Magic 8 Ball in her signature trippy, tormented aesthetic.
“My artist name, Distortedd, fits my art perfectly,” she says. “It’s a little bit crazy and distorted. It’s trippy. I use a lot of cartoon characters and like playing around with random things, misplacing things, and distorting them.”
“It’s been around for so many years, and it works perfectly with my art because it’s this playful magical tool that’s just random — you never know what’s going to pop up on the ball when you shake it.”
“My art is really playful and childlike. I used a lot of cartoon characters, little monsters and colors, and random objects. I wanted to remember what it’s like being a kid again playing with an 8 Ball for the first time, so I opened it up and had everything that’s inside the ball come outside. There are these triangles that represent the part when you shake the 8 Ball and an answer appears. I wanted to make it playful and magical.”
