Optical Illusions » Tessellations

Cheating with tessellations

david — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:05:35 +0000

Tessellations are patterns whose repeat motifs fit together like jig-saw pieces, with no gaps and no repeats. For an introduction, see our earlier animation. They can be abstract patterns, but the most intriguing are the ones devised by tessellation maestro M.C.Escher in the middle of the last century, which show representational motifs, such as animals, [...]

Animated Illusion Cartoons – re-posting of Chicken and Leaf

david — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 18:18:21 +0000

Woops, slight technical glitch with the original post of this, just before Christmas. So this is a re-posting of the third of our animated illusion cartoons, Chicken and Leaf. It may still run jerkily on first run through, should be OK second time around. These cartoons are meant to work just like movie versions of [...]

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 [...]

A tessellation pioneer

david — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 16:20:52 +0000

You probably know the tiling patterns of M.C.Escher. But how about Koloman Moser? Here are a couple of his designs. Moser was working in Vienna, Austria, a hundred years ago. (He died in 1918). I don’t know where he would have learned to do tessellating designs, that is, designs with motifs that repeat the [...]

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 [...]

Tessellations with figures

david — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:24:54 +0000

A tessellation is a pattern made up of elements that repeat with no gaps and no overlaps. The elements may be abstract shapes, or may be recognisable objects or creatures, like the ones in the tessellations of M.C.Escher. When I begun playing around with tessellations, I thought understanding the procedures needed to make patterns that [...]

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 the graphics [...]

Tessellation Tutorial

david — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 00:56:58 +0000

Note added in March 2011! If you’re new to tessellations, before tackling this post, first watch my later post with an animation of how tessellations work. What is a tessellation? Any regular pattern consists of identical areas, which repeat without overlaps or gaps. An obvious example would be tiles on a wall. However tiles [...]