Stunning  crop art has sprung up across rice fields in Japan, but this is no  alien creation.  The designs have been cleverly  planted.

Farmers creating the huge displays use no ink or  dye.

Instead, different color  rice plants have been precisely and strategically arranged and grown  in the  paddy fields.

As summer progresses and the  plants shoot up, the detailed artwork begins to  emerge.

A Sengoku  warrior on horseback has been created from hundreds  of thousands of rice plants.

The colors  are created by using different varieties.  This photo was taken  in Inakadate, Japan.

Napoleon  on horseback can be seen from the skies.

This  was created by precision planting and months of planning by  villagers and farmers located in Inkadate, Japan.

Fictional  warrior Naoe Kanetsugu and his wife, Osen, whose lives are  featured on the television seriesTenchijin,appear in  fields in the town of Yonezawa in the Yamagata prefecture of  Japan.

This year, various artwork has popped up in other  rice-farming   areas of  Japan, including designs of deer dancers.

Smaller  works of crop art can be seen in other rice-farming areas of Japan  such as this image of Doraemon and deer dancers

The  farmers create the murals  by planting little purple and  yellow-leafed Kodaimai rice along with their local green-leafed  Tsugaru, a Roman variety, to create the colored patterns in the  time between planting and harvesting in September.

The murals  in Inakadate cover 15,000 square meters of paddy fields.

From ground level, the designs are invisible, and  viewers have to climb the mock castle tower of the village office to  get a glimpse of the  work.

Closer to  the image, the careful placement of the thousands  of rice plants in the paddy  fields can be seen.

Rice-paddy art was started  there in 1993 as a local revitalization project, an idea that  grew from meetings of the village committees.

The  different varieties of rice plants grow alongside each other to create  the masterpieces.

In the first nine years, the village office  workers and local farmers grew a simple design of Mount  Iwaki every year.

But their ideas grew more complicated and  attracted more attention.

In  2005, agreements between landowners  allowed the creation of enormous  rice paddy art.

A year later, organizers used computers to  precisely plot planting of the four differently colored rice varieties  that bring the images to life.

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