Optical Illusions » Illusion demos with animations

Magic Ring

david — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 07:25:47 +0000

Here’s a movie of a brilliant, double spiral novelty illusion ring. It’s available to buy from Grand Illusions, and on that link you can also see another movie of the illusory effect. As the ring is rotated, it seems to expand when rotated one way, and contract when rotated the other [...]

Judith with the Head of Holofernes – or is it the other way round?

david — Mon, 04 Jul 2011 14:49:49 +0000

Who owns the body? Judith does to start with, but then Holofernes does, and finally, it’s ambiguous. Here’s a new addition to our series of ambiguous improved artworks. Apologies this time are due to Rubens. I got the idea for these illusions from a print by Picasso. For a downloadable [...]

Hiroyuki Ito’s new depth illusion

david — Thu, 05 May 2011 20:44:06 +0000

Do you see an effect of depth as if looking into a tunnel in the right hand spinning pattern? It’s a new depth illusion published by Hiroyuki Ito last year. It’s not all that strong in my example, but it’s certainly there to my eye, and it gets stronger [...]

Watchful heads

david — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:04:25 +0000

I was in a Picasso show recently and noticed the head of a portrait sculpture apparently turning to follow me as I walked past. More on the Picasso later, the movie above is my reconstruction of the effect, using the head of the emperor Augustus (I think). It’s not done [...]

A (partly) fake demo of Pulfrich’s Pendulum

david — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 14:49:06 +0000

To view this illusion, you’ll need the knack of viewing 3D picture pairs without special spectacles, or a viewer – that is, by viewing them cross-eyed. If you haven’t got that trick, and want to try, start with one of our earlier posts on 3D. If you do have the [...]

How to do tessellations – animated demo

david — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 06:08:28 +0000

Just about our first post was a tessellation tutorial. It was quite comprehensive, but a bit heavy going. I’ve been wanting to post an animated demo, because I reckon that seeing that first would make the tutorial much easier to follow. So the animation is below, but first, a reminder of the basics: A tessellation [...]

Adelbert Ames II

david — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:42:45 +0000

This is a variant on one of the famous demonstrations devised by USA born Adelbert Ames II, the Ames Window. Watch the name Adelbert rotate, and it just goes around clockwise. So does its shadow. But then watch the name Ames II rotate. At a certain point, it changes direction, [...]

Which way around is Mercury going?

david — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:57:01 +0000

Does Mercury look like he’s rotating clockwise or anti-clockwise? That may depend on whether you look at the left hand figure, or the silhouette. That right hand silhouette figure can appear to rotate either way round. Some viewers find that it flips from clockwise to anti-clockwise spontaneously, but others may [...]

Position cues from a moving shadow

david — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 18:03:00 +0000

Does the ball sometimes seem to be bouncing, and moving nearer and further away? Look again just at the track of the ball and you’ll see that all it ever does is to move diagonally from one corner of the board to the other. The spatial effects, [...]

Tessellation Animation

admin — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:12:17 +0000

The Dutch tessellation whizz M.C.Escher was fascinated by transformations from one tessellation to another, for example in his series of prints Metamorphosis. I’m sure he would have explored animated versions if it had been practical in the 1940′s. So I’ve borrowed a couple of his motifs and animated them. I [...]