Optical Illusions » POSTS WITH ANIMATIONS

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 knack [...]

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 is [...]

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, and [...]

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 find [...]

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, and even the way [...]

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. [...]

Leonardo Animated (or the New Leonardo Cartoon)

david — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 17:00:50 +0000

The illusion of movement when a series of images is animated is one we take for granted nowadays. However, here’s a small world first (I think) as new example. It’s a new Leonardo cartoon. Actually, there is a Leonardo cartoon already, THE Leonardo cartoon, in London’s National Gallery. But that’s not a movie. Art historians use the [...]

A New(?) Ever Receding Staircase

david — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:09:18 +0000

More on staircases. Here’s a picture of penguins on a stripped down version of a never-ending staircase, like the one in M.C.Escher’s famous print Ascending Descending. (Or just put the name Escher and that title into Google images to get stacks of versions). In my version, it’s penguins who will go on climbing the [...]

Revolving Heads

david — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 12:17:08 +0000

Heads that present one character one way up and another when rotated have been favorite illusions for over a century. Here are two heads from a cartoon story I devised about a boy who gets stuck in a weird hotel. The receptionist and chef, (Mr. and Mrs. Turner …. ) seem OK at [...]

Tessellations

david — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 01:25:20 +0000

I love tessellations. Here’s quite a complicated example, with a transformation running across it, and an added graphic twist. Want to try your own tessellations? There are software short-cuts you can use but to really get the hang of them, do them by hand, with a graphics package on a computer. (I use [...]