Medusa’s evil was so complete that even after being beheaded, her severed head could be used as a weapon. After Perseus slayed the creature, he used the head to turn the man forcing his mother to marry him, into stone. Perseus then gave the token to Athena, who originally helped him with the powerful shield. Athena then placed the Medusa’s head on her shield, the Aegis, where it could then be used to take down even the most deadly of enemies!

Most artists fail to do justice to a creature as terrifying and hideous as Medusa. But let’s face it – it is not that easy to paint something powerful enough that would turn person into stone when he or she looks at your painting! Still, the clever minds behind Truly Design Visual Communication Studio found a clever way to pay tribute to Medusa.

While their painting may not actually turn people into stone, their decision to do the painting in an anamorphic style does make it difficult to actually view Medusa in her entirety. While you might not need Perseus’ shield to protect your eyes from the work, the effect does mimic the hero’s difficulty in only being able to look at his enemy from certain angles.

Paying tribute to the myth in this manner is probably a lot safer than actually painting something that could turn someone to stone. Plus, it ensures their viewers can live to tell others of the great work, which statues are notoriously bad at doing. On the other hand, artists can always state their creation actually works, and that it’s your fault you haven’t turned into stone because you obviously haven’t seen their Medusa from quite perfect angle ;D

But while those efforts were pretty well known, the studios also played a much more covert role in keeping America safe -by disguising some of the nation’s largest aircraft plants to look like residential neighborhoods. The images featured here are all from The Lockheed-Vega aircraft plant in Burbank (seen at left before the camouflage was applied and below afterwards), although these techniques were used on multiple military locations.

It all started when Colonel  John F Ohmer, a leader in camouflage technology, suggested that the U.S. create a protective cover on a major air base outside of Pearl Harbor. His superior officers ignored his idea, but when the Japanese attacked on December 7, 1941, his camouflage concept suddenly seemed like a really great idea.

Of course, one man with a great plan couldn’t handle this type of task on his own, but the plan was made possible when Hollywood studios, including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Disney Studios, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Universal Pictures all volunteered their services.

Scenic designers, painters, art directors, landscape artists, animators, carpenters, lighting experts and prop men were suddenly using their unique talents not to create movie sets, but whole imaginary towns on top of existing military installations.

Entire suburbs were painted on canvas and adorned with rubber cars and feather trees to provide a more realistic look. Factory air ducts that stuck out of the canvas were disguised to look like fire hydrants.

Of course, a real suburb would never stay still all the time, so to add even more realism to the scene, workers would climb along support beams and move the cars up and down the imaginary streets. They would take laundry off of the clothes lines and then put them back up later.

If these installations were put up anywhere aside from Southern California, they would not only suffer without the skill of the Hollywood effects teams that helped create them, but they would likely also fall victim to the weather. Southern California, known for its moderate climate, provided an environment free from snow and heavy-rain, that would have otherwise destroyed these clever camo designs.

Unbeknownst to the U.S. at the time though, by the time these elaborate designs were completed in October 1942, Japan was already too weak to launch an attack against mainland America, so in the end, these elaborate ruses served little purpose in the actual war effort. Even so, they are an amazing part of military history, showing just how convincing camouflage can be in the right hands.

Of course, these techniques wouldn’t serve much purpose these days with all of our modern detection devices. But at the time, clever illusions were able to play an important role in the protection of the Allied forces. Be sure to follow the mentioned link for more military-used optical illusion tactics.

While I didn’t end up getting any good forced perspective images during my most recent trip, I did learn a lot about the illusions used in movies to convince us that what’s on the screen is actually going on in reality. There are tons of special effects used in movies, from set models to green screen to motion capture, which is why a trip to Universal Studios is so cool. They really try to explain these effects and use them to interact with park-goers in real time. Perhaps the best example was their Special Effects show, which can be seen in its entirety here:

What do you guys think of these kind of movie illusions? Would you like to see more of them on the site?

As you see Alexandre… or Andy Wall-hole if you will (which is the nickname Alex earned himself), carves incredible face portraits into the bricks and mortar of buildings. DailyMail reports how Alex has peppered the walls and sides of old buildings around his native Lisbon with an impressive selection of portraits, where he hopes his “faces in the city” will inspire people and make them see beyond what meets their eyes.

But Alex (23) hasn’t confined his work solely to Lisbon. His etchings can be found on buildings across Europe. He added:

With my work, I try to delve into the several layers that compose the edifice of history, to take the shadows cast by this model of uniform development to try to understand what lies behind it. 

Logically, each of Alex’s works depends on the size of the wall or surface he’s about to work with, where a two-storey building can take him a whole day to complete. Also, Alex added how most of his art is done on derelict facades and buildings which should somewhat calm the authorities down.

Pictures © curtsy of CATERS NEWS AGENCY

Google Street View Illusion

Apart from playing with design, I’m obsessed with new internet trends and emerging technologies. As much as I love sharing original illusions with you, I’m even more thrilled when I get the opportunity to introduce you with something you probably never  thought of using when searching for optical illusions. Hope you approve my style, where I try to fuse our illusion topic as much as I can with modern options.

I think it’s refreshing to see our standard content, using different approach occasionally. Our friend, João Marques took his time to introduce us to Google Street View. By now, all of you used Google Maps at some point of your life. Well, at some major cities Google’s mobile crew took high res photos of surrounding areas, while cruising down the local streets. This caused a lot of controversy, as sometimes citizen privacy was invaded, but on the other hand – it helped cops catch crooks in Netherlands.

João has been a daily follower of MOI for some months, and decided to give something back. Before presenting us with the illusion, he thanked us for managing this website with wisdom, “posting only very interesting stuff.” Move around this interactive window, and try to spot what João found so interesting…

I was spending some time in Google Street View, when I saw some guys doing something strange in an window. I zoomed more and found that it was a mural painting, and was completely tricked. – João

Could you spot this yourself?

As you see, the answer is not so easy to figure out. I was too completely stuck before I found this solution picture on your right. Author behind this intriguing mural is Shea, a designer, artist, student, and manatee enthusiast.

Yesterday, I took some time and fully redesigned the widgets page. This was on my schedule for months, but somehow I kept avoiding this (for ages). Hope you like how results turned out. Old time visitors will probably see this as less important update, but I hope that the new design will present you the widgets in better view, and show you how useful they can be. If you feel like it, I advise you to take a look – who knows, maybe you’ll find something intriguing as well! BTW, I have updated the Newsletter and iPhone App page as well!

Believe it or not, everything you see is a painting on a flat wall!

This is exact same wall before the Mural was painted on it

Check the mural gallery below to see more of the stuff we never published before: