Mighty Optical Illusions » Animations

Kaleidoscopic Motion Illusion

Vurdlak — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 22:07:31 +0000

What I’m about to show you proves that there are still new optical illusions out there, just waiting to be discovered by some brave soul! On your right you may see a rotating wheel that seems to pulsate each time it aligns with the inner, star-shaped stationary object. You may also have noticed, that at the same time, the inner stationary shape seems to wiggle when the alignment occurs. Why is this happening, when it’s obvious that the inner shape is stationary, while the outer wheel’s rotation is perfectly smooth?

It turns out that the pulsations is caused by color assimilation, and the wiggling happens due to “ambiguous figure-ground segregation” (whatever this means), as Peter van der Helm discusses in his paper (2007).

Sushi Wave Optical Illusion

Vurdlak — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:04:03 +0000

Apparently I was wrong when I said Beyonce does wonderful optical illusions. It turns out that the afterimage in my last post features Deepika Padukone (an Indian actress) instead. Thanks Toby! But let’s forget this little error I made, and concentrate on something more important - have you noticed something different about Mighty Optical Illusions? As promised, the new design is finally here! I know, I know… Only header and logo have changed, but this is something most of you complained about, and you were right. So what do you think of the changes? Are they for better or worse? What else do you think should be added? In general, how do you feel about the looks of our site now? What is the feeling you get the very first second you open this site? Be honest, please ;) Oh, and about the illusion… well, you’ll figure it out!

Ninja’s Colorful Shuriken Illusion

Vurdlak — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 19:10:59 +0000

A shuriken, our word of the day, is a traditional Japanese concealed weapon that was generally used for throwing, and sometimes stabbing or slashing. They are sharpened hand-held blades made from a variety of everyday items such as nails, knives, washers, and other flat plates of metal. When translated from Japanese, it literally means “sword hidden in the hand”. Here in the west it’s most commonly known as “throwing star”, “ninja star” or inaccurately as “Chinese stars”, though they took many different shapes and designs during the time they were used.

So what does all of this have to do with our latest optical illusion, you ask? Not much except visual similarity, I guess. I just thought it would be cool to mention ninjas and shurikens in the paragraph above. Ok, now let me explain how the illusion works – If you concentrate on the central dot in the animation below, after seeing the first frame consisting of two overlapped colored objects, you get the impression next two frames are showcasing isolated objects filled with appropriate fluorescent color! In reality, all frames except first lack color, and what you perceive as color afterwards is just an afterimage burnt in your retina! Don’t worry though, it only lasts couple of seconds…

Concentrate on the black central dot, and see the colors magically appear!

Freakish Frame Optical Illusion

Vurdlak — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 15:26:40 +0000

Just by looking at this frame on your right, you would say there is no chance it depicts a perfect rectangle, right? But hang on there for a second! Let me show you what happens if we just remove the wavy frame surrounding the picture… Voila!

The inner picture now becomes a perfect rectangle! Be sure to check the #gif animation attached below for proof. It’s really strange how certain patterns can influence our perception of reality, do you agree?

This illusion was originally produced by Greeenpro2009, and you may see the video of it on Greeen’s youtube channel. I personally adore simple optical illusions (such as this one), specially when done professionally, and in such a visually appealing way. Goood job Greeenpro2009!

Tracheal Tube Optical Illusion

Vurdlak — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 21:03:19 +0000

The tracheal tube illusion animation your about to see has been circulating the net lately. It is a simple relative sizes optical illusion, which goes in tandem with the following question:

Which tracheal tube is longer?

When I first saw it, two questions immediately captured my attention: A) What is “tracheal tube”? and B) Will the illusion work for others, where I wasn’t even sure it worked for me. Still, based on its popularity on the various social networks (=read: Facebook), I suppose it is OK.

So, not being lazy, I have searched the web and learned that tracheal tube is a catheter (?!) that can be inserted into the patient’s trachea in order to establish and maintain clear airway…

Never would’ve guessed the day will come when we would have catheter illusions appearing on this site! It would probably be the last thing I could come up with, if someone asked me in prior to give my wildest prediction regarding future illusion submissions! In this illusion the lower tube should appear longer when positioned vertically… What do you think of it?

Trippy Beans Wallpaper Comic

Vurdlak — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 12:27:28 +0000

I love funny comics. I love them even more when they use an optical illusion as part of the joke. One such perfect example is this psychiatric session comic, sent to me recently by my friend Marin. I’m pretty sure we’ve already featured the floating beans wallpaper at some point in time, but today’s example puts the “seemingly animated” pattern in completely different surrounding – a shrink’s office! So, have you been drinking much coffee lately?

Swimming Pattern Animations

Vurdlak — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:45:17 +0000

I got these three animations from somewhere, and I think the time has come for me to show them to you. What you are about to see is a simple animated dot, which travels in all kind of directions across a fixated background pattern. The pattern is motionless, yet when your eyes concentrate on the moving ball, the background comes to life and the pattern you first perceived as static, starts to dance and wiggle. There are three examples showcased below, and I invite you all to try them and report which one(s) you found most effective!

You’ve probably recognized the pattern as one being often used in all kinds of optical illusion examples. From #Seemingly Bent category items, all the way to “Seemingly Moving Illusions” which are categorized inside the #Animations category. I still don’t truly understand what is so special with rectangles on grayish background, yet they aways do the trick! It must have something to do with all them subtle black and white shades each rectangle is equipped with, if you ask me…

Hue Optical Illusion

Vurdlak — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 19:21:07 +0000

Arjen Goldschmidt has sent in what appears to be the best (proof-endorsed) color optical illusion I have seen up to date! Below examples showcase embedded lines of seemingly different colors. The reason they look different is because our brain judges the color of an object by comparing it to surrounding colors. So without us even knowing it, in first example, our brains compare the flowing red stripes to the yellow stripes, forcing us to think they are orange. The blue stripes make the red ones appear much darker -almost purple, even though they are exactly the same color! This is just one of the examples why you cannot trust what you see even with your own eyes. Next time someone swears they saw Jesus, UFO, or a ghost, show them this animation ;)

Hue is one of the main properties of a color, defined technically as “the degree to which a stimulus can be described as similar to or different from stimuli that are described as red, green, blue, and yellow” (those beeing the unique hues). The other main correlatives of color appearance are colorfulness, chroma, saturation, lightness, and brightness.

In painting color theory, a hue refers to a pure color—one without tint or shade (added white or black pigment, respectively). A hue is also an element of the color wheel. Hues are first processed in the brain in areas in the extended V4 called globs.

VIDEO Dots in Motion Illusion

Vurdlak — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 19:40:48 +0000

Greenpro is at it again! This time giving us something that can most easily be seen by viewing the following video. As it appears, something strange happens to the scattered dot-pattern if it’s accompanied by the simple rolling object. I promise you shall be surprised at how your brain processes these simple (static) dots. Watch the video below to learn more and don’t forget to share your thoughts!

As time goes our readership grows, and you might be surprised if I told you how many new faces arrive here each day – Those are the people that have just recently learned of this site. It’s normal for them to feel little lost when they arrive here, thus why it’s so important for me to have illusion categories, random illusion button and so many underlined (related) illusions in each one of my texts put in center of attention.

I felt this needed to be explained, as I get daily inquires why there are so many references to old stuff – it’s easier to discover earlier content this way, that is my humble opinion. BTW, I’d also like to remind all of you using iGoogle on regular basis to add our “Optical Illusion of The Day” gadget if you still haven’t …you may also download our regular desktop versions! I think it’s the best way to stay updated with new stuff Mighty Optical Illusions comes up with (almost) each day. Now for the promised illusion video:

Adjusting Speed Optical Illusion

Vurdlak — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 16:04:16 +0000

Either once again I failed to explain the difference between simple animated gifs and cinemagraphs, or I really stink at choosing illusions for you :D Shame you didn’t love our previous post as much as I did, but heck – there is no purpose for me to push something you really don’t like. I hope today’s animation will be perceived better, as it has nothing do to with cinemagraphs and the effect it holds is a truly epic!

Check this out: wait for the warping animation below to get running. Then, when you cover up the center of the image with your hand (just like in the example showed on your right) the dots will appear to speed up. On the other hand, if you cover up the edges the dots will appear to have slowed down. Now if this isn’t illusion, I really don’t know what else to show ya’.

Just What Do You Think You’re Doing, Dave?

Vurdlak — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:35:22 +0000

Seeing our latest illusion, I was immediately reminded of Hal 9000 and his memorable voice addressing Dave Bowman in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I won’t talk about how great this movie really was, and how it marked the whole era, I’d rather see what you think of the illusion attached below. By now you must have noticed it has something to do with our recent Psycho post. After my initial disappointment (having read your feedback), I learned that my previous pick just didn’t do justice to the whole cinemagraphs story. I learned how I failed in choosing the right representative to start this whole new category with. I just hope today’s sample will change all that. If you have time, feel free to read my thoughts on this from couple of days earlier.

Mesmerizing Cinemagraph Illusion

Vurdlak — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 21:38:59 +0000

With a little help from Jemish Dave, I stumbled across a unique technique that left me mesmerized. Ever seen something like this below? Quit reading this text and check the illusion attached. How long does it take you before you notice what it hides? After you checked the illusion out, you may PROCEED reading – don’t cheat!….. Has it surprised you? It may take some time for these things to load, and it also depends on type of connection and speed of your interface for the effect to happen seamlessly, though! If you want to know, these things are called cinemagraphs (little different than stereoscopic images we already showed). Creating a cinemagraph photo is not as simple as it may appear. Some of them took their authors entire day to make, but as you see the results are breathtaking. Cinemagraph is a technique of blending the effects of images and videos. Some of them can end up quite exciting, funny or extremely creative. It might take few seconds for them to fully load, so be patient and watch carefully!

Benham’s Disk Optical Illusion

Vurdlak — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 16:26:51 +0000

This is one of my childhood’s favorite visual illusions, one you could literally have spent hours playing with! Unfortunately, back then I wasn’t aware it was invented by C.E. Benham, and that it already had a name – Benham’s Disk.

It was pretty popular back in the “old days”, as you could easily make your own unique spinner using nothing but piece of cardboard, a pencil and a toothpick! So what is so special about it? In 1894, toymaker Mr. C.E. Benham discovered that a spinning disk with a particular pattern of black and white marks could cause people to see colors! Mr. Benham called his disk an Artificial Spectrum Top and sold it through “Messrs, Newton and Co.”

Benham’s Top (or Benham’s Disk) has puzzled scientists for over 100 years. Let’s see if the spinning black and white disk can fool you into seeing some colors?! Do you think you can understand why is this happening? At some point, you should also be able to see a radiation warning sign inside the spinner!

Dancing Stars Optical Illusion

Vurdlak — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 21:57:04 +0000

Let’s see what we have prepared for you today… User called Yep submitted an interesting picture in somewhat unconventional way – Using our recently added function (where you can now attach photos inside your comments) Yep proposed we publish “Dancing Stars” in one of our next updates. I’m not 100% sure if we had this one already, but you have to admit that the effect it provides is really memorable. Just like the Ouchi illusion from few days ago, dancing stars below start to wiggle as soon as your eyes begin to wander across the screen. BTW, notice how the rectangle shapes appear slightly slant, even though they actually aren’t?

The Ouchi Illusion Revamped

Vurdlak — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 15:06:04 +0000

The Ouchi illusion is an illusion named after its inventor, Japanese artist Hajime Ouchi. It works in a way where the central disk seems to float above the checkered background when moving the eyes around while viewing the figure. Scrolling the image horizontally or vertically provides a much stronger effect. In this version titled “Ouchi Quintuplets” from author Kentra Gilbert, the effect is amplified even stronger! If you’re asking yourself what causes this strange phenomenon, well the illusion is caused by random eye movements, which are independent in the horizontal and vertical directions. However, the two types of patterns in the figure nearly eliminate the effect of the eye movements parallel to each type of pattern. Consequently, the neurons stimulated by the disk convey the signal that the disk jitters due to the horizontal component of the eye movements, while the neurons stimulated by the background convey the signal that movements are due to the independent vertical component. Since the two regions jitter independently, the brain interprets the regions as corresponding to separate independent objects (Olveczky et al. 2003).