Mighty Optical Illusions » Anamorphosis

Chop Cup: Where’s the Ball?

Vurdlak — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 11:15:13 +0000

Where is the ball?

Got another great vid from a friend of mine yesterday. Even though you may think: “What is a magic trick doing on an optical illusions dedicated website”, you’ll quickly change your mind after the clip has ended.

But wait! There is more to it then you probably noticed at first. Be sure to replay the video couple of times, and each time concentrate on another background figure. Are the wooden mannequin, Rubik’s Cube, radio and whole bunch of other items lined as you originally presumed?

Even though magic tricks and optical illusions have whole lot in common, you’ll certainly agree that Chop Cups video has much more to do with illusions, than magicians and tricks. This has to be one of my favorite clips of all times. Btw, it gives me a great pleasure observing the “Top 10 Optical Illusions” chart in our sidebar. It’s like watching a live-growing organism, providing me with real-time feedback of what kind of material my audience really appreciates. Apart from ratings, comments and “top 10 illusions”, I’m thinking of engaging you guys even further. More stuff coming soon!

Painted Basket Ball Optical Illusion

Vurdlak — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 13:18:35 +0000

In May 2009, Greg “The Grease” Lehman showed us a relatively new approach to 3D Anamorphic Artwork. His tactics involved similar moves some of them chalk artists use, but with use of a printer we managed to avoid the artistic factor, where normally we would have to get our hands “dirty” to actually paint the image. This time I found a creation done by one of his fans, where you can see the result is quite amazing. Apparently the Spalding we see is just a painting on the street, but when seen from certain angle looks impossibly real. In fact, it’s so realistic that I have my doubts on this one. Perhaps the user that submitted this, sent me the photo of a real ball (by mistake?) that the author used to guide him in his painting process. You be the judge!

Apparently this Spalding basketball ball is just painted on the street, though...

To see how the painting came to be, see the gallery:

“Anamorphosis” by Luc d’Hanis

Vurdlak — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 21:34:16 +0000

I’m glad that my writer’s block lasted this short, and hopefully I’ll be swinging back in full rhythm now. Am not sure if you noticed, but I’ve added “Top 10 Optical Illusions” section at the bottom of my sidebar. Based on your ratings, only the best optical illusions will automatically appear there. There are some rules though – optical illusion need to have at least 5 votes before they can candidate themselves. I hope that in time, all of the posts will get much more votes than needed. Hopefully as time goes by, we will have credible leaderboard of top optical illusions. I’m very excited about this new feature. What else do you suggest? I’m closely listening to your suggestions, and currently the best one I heard is advice to create some kind of a form, where you could submit your articles, images, etc… so they are completely ready, just waiting for me to approve them. Will keep you informed about this…

Today’s gallery is called “Anamorphosis“, and was created by Luc d’Hanis & Sofie Lachaert. This technique is very well understood by our old visitors, but if you’re a newbie you may want to check the Anamorposis category first. In today’s example when porcelain platters meet reflective object, the distorted drawings of precious birds on the platter become perfectly reflected on the bottles or cups. The awareness of the birds’ potential extinction emerges only when objects are carefully aligned as a pair. The distorted drawings on the platters only reveal themselves when you place a reflective object in the middle of the platter. Hope you’ll enjoy these “minimalistic” optical illusion photos. Oh, by the way – don’t forget to vote after you check our archived illusions. We need as many votes possible, to bring some credibility to out “top illusions” leaderboard.

The secret is revealed when you place a reflective object in the middle of the platter.

Here you may check some more Anamorphic examples:

JRD Tata’s Anamorphic Portrait

Vurdlak — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:10:00 +0000

User called Prady submitted an interesting “anamorphosis mystery” few days ago, and I think it’s best to let him tell the story in his own words. It goes like this: “Hi Vurdlak! This is something I thought would be right for the moillusions.com. Painting you see on the right can be seen at the Tata Museum, in Jamshedpur, India. This was a gift to JRD Tata on his Birthday by a street artist. Nobody was able to understand this art form of his. Unfortunately, only the painting was given to JRD and the artist had promised to reveal the secret shortly. However, JRD was no more when the secret was finally revealed. The painting… The secret of the painting is a short shiny steel rod placed on the circular mark on the painting. This is what you see in the reflection on the steel rod… JRD Tata himself…. Hope you enjoy this as much as I did!”

I believe we even blogged about this image in the past, but never had so much detailed photos and knew the insteresting story behind it. Those of you who missed the original post, will have full insight now, and those of you already saw it, will surely enjoy it as well! I’m going to study now, since I have important exam tomorrow. It’s called “Comutation Systems”, and shouldn’t be too hard to study. Still, everything si possible. Keep your fingers crossed!

Anamorph 2008 Trailer – Full HD Optical Illusion Video

Vurdlak — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 06:57:00 +0000

As I check websites that post articles about Mighty Optical Illusions, I have found out this story about us. I love when people blog about us, and as a token of my appreciation I have linked that blog back for all of you to check. I am aware that our traffic is miles higher, but this is just to show you that if you make a story about my website, you can expect me to send you few thousand visitors back. If you have a blog push some visitors to us via a review of our site, and we will return the favor! Congratulations “Ordinary Contradictions”!

Considering today’s topic, Anamoprhosis is a renaissance painting technique which uses the principals of false perspective to construct an alternate image within the frontal composition. This method was often used during the history, when artists promoted their message or unorthodox views in a way not visible to everyone, especially since political regimes and church beliefs often prohibited freedom of speech. I have just found out from Polidoro64 that there is a new movie out there in cinemas that is called Anamorph starring William Dafoe. I have attached the Full HD trailer for you to check. This line from trailer was pretty interesting: “the truth depends on where you stand” – the shortest and meaningful description for anoamorphosis. Do you agree? Polidoro64 added: “Maybe you find something for your great website in this trailer…” Will you see this movie in cinemas? I wanted to add some kind of open source poll to this post, but all are spammy with many links and nasty looks. Is there simple embeddable poll that looks nice?

Cylindric Mirror Illusions Galore!

Vurdlak — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 22:50:00 +0000

Before we start, I have a question for you: how many of you use Facebook? Probably many of you… Well, did you know that you can get newest optical illusion from this site each day shown in your Facebook profile? Many of you added it, but some still don’t know about this. It’s simple go here and press “Add the application” button!

Cylindric mirror optical illusions are way fun, and something I regret not posting so often. Today I assembled collection of 5 cylindric mirror illusions you probably haven’t seen before. The optical illusions works when a cylinder mirror is placed at the correct center position of seemingly non-understandable and blurred image. If the cylinder has been placed correctly, you can see what the artist wanted you to see – Walt Disney maybe? This would be interesting to use among cyphers to code and encode hidden messages, don’t you agree? Today it is probably easy to create these kind of images with modern computers and image editing software, but back then it used great amount of talent to create something like this. The effect presented here is called Anamorphosis, or anamorphic cylinders illusion. Probably the author placed the cylinder first, and then started creating the flick just by looking at the cylinder. I believe this was the correct procedure. Am not sure though… Many more examples can be seen in Anamorphism category. I have underlined (linked) many related cylinder illusions in this text, so go ahead and check them out. Which one did you like the most?

Reflection Of an Optical Illusion

Vurdlak — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 13:44:00 +0000

Below you can actually see two different illusions. The first, most obvious one shouldn’t be a problem to spot for those of you who already saw Walt Disney anamorphic illusion. More explanation can be found inside our Anamorphism category, more specific in the post titled “Cylinder Mirrors“. The second, less obvious illusion, is that the image reflected on the steel cylinder is in it’s origin a true optical illusion. If you don’t see it, look at this image of impossible pillars. The photo set includes two photos, where the second can be found inside this post. Original name of this art is “Reflection of an optical illusion“, and originates from Questacon, Canberra.

Concerning the site, I placed a little banner in the sidebar for our Mighty Tricks website, as requested by some visitors (so now I can stop “spamming” the threads with mighty trick’s posts). Now you can easily access both sites without waisting time looking for the correct url. Those of you who requested this fix, know what I’m talking about. Also, I did the same on the tricks website, you can go there and check it out. Enjoy!

Anamorphic Guinness and Coffe Cups

Vurdlak — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 15:23:00 +0000

Damien Toy and Lea Hinchcliff emailed me almost simultaneously about these anamorphic coasters. I believe they are great marketing trick to pull the media attention. As you see you can see the “hidden message” only if you place a cup of coffee, beer glass or cylindric mirror on top of the coaster. I’m not sure if the camera that takes this photos, has to be in right position as well, or you can take photos from anywhere. Marvelous! There are bunch of similar photos inside this post, below the fold. You can check slightly different use of anamorphosis in Ambassadors Skull illusion. Even Walt Disney’s characters have been used in similar creation to make a portrait of a famous cartoon artist. Pretty interesting, I should try and make one of my own some day. It’s just that I have so little spare time, and so much ideas on my mind ts-tss….

Happy Kettles

Vurdlak — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 15:53:00 +0000

This is one of the funniest (and coolest!) optical illusions I have seen recently! If you look at this photo more closely, you will notice that the eyes and happy mouth aren’t drawn on these two kettles, instead it’s the perfect example of anamorphism. It’s hard to believe, that the photo was taken from the perfect angle, so that the reflection of the stove makes the happy face on the kettles. If you like this, you will surely adore Walt Disney and Jules Verne anamorphic portraits. Originally I posted cylindrical mirrors, but as wee see it works with the other kitchen accessories as well! Also check: Jean De Dinterville optical illusion.

Skull Ambasadors

Vurdlak — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 15:23:00 +0000

Hans Holbein the Younger was a German artist who painted in a Northern Renaissance style, and was best known for his numerous portraits. The one you see below is titled “Ambassadors”, and was already posted on Mighty Optical Illusions. You can check my older post. I got many questions from you, my loyal visitors to explain with more details how the skull should be seen. As I already explained in my previous post, it is anamorphic image, and should be watched from an angle. Strange object at the bottom of the picture (skull)can be seen if look at it almost from the edge of the canvas. Then it becomes apparent. I think it’s best to show you in step by step pictures. Open the article for tutorial. If you like anamorphosis, check: Walt Disney, cylinder mirrors, strange anamorphosis, tea cups, Jules Verne… and few more in M.C. Escher category.