Here’s another example incorporating a back wall to the artwork. Sure he could have stretched the piece over a long space of sidewalk to play with our perception, but by creating this ad for Celebrity Cruises with a back wall, the drawing looks right no mater what angle you view it from.

Of course, he doesn’t incorporate backdrops into artworks that don’t need them. In fact, adding a background to this reflecting pool illusion might actually distract from the amazing likeness of the actors portrayed in the sidewalk.

If you need further proof that Wenner is certainly one of the masters of his craft, consider the fact that he was the first 3D chalk artist to conceive of an interactive chalk drawing as seen in this photograph from 1987.

Zip-lining across a city street can be fun, but it’s nothing compared to flying across wild terrain. For those that don’t have the time or money to get away from it all though, Wenner offers a grand compromise with this gorgeous canyon advertising the beauty of wild British Columbia.

For more great works by Kurt Warner, don’t miss this piece in the Telegraph, or just visit his website.

While many of these are interesting, few are suitable for MoIllusions, but this great graffiti project spotted on Bond Street in New York City by Twitpic user Kennycity certainly is.

While any graffiti tribute would take some time and forethought (assuming the artist didn’t want to be arrested in the process), this lenticular portrait took even more time to put together as the creator had to figure out the angle his work would be viewed at and to ensure it went up straight in order for the illusion to work. In case you were curious what it looks like from the wrong angle, her is a side view:

As if all this weren’t impressive enough, the artist didn’t just stop with the face of the late Mr. Jobs, he also created the image to portray a young Steve Jobs when viewed from the opposite direction, giving the viewer a quick look at the aging process of the visionary.

While there are no indications as to who put up the artwork (one of the drawbacks of being a graffiti artist), they certainly live up to Apple’s slogan and “think different.”

Actors pose with gym equipment on what the Guinness World Records bills as the world’s largest 3D painting, at Canary Wharf in London (November, 2011)

This record-breaking drawing was created in London’s West India Quays, Canary Wharf, but even if you were in the city at the right time, the chances you got a glimpse of it are pretty slim…despite taking seven days to put up, it was removed the day after it was finished.

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.

In the end, the images are not only a great way to document all the ways the school has changed in the last century, but also to thank the students, faculty and administrators who allowed it to grow. For many of the people pictured, it might also be the only way they can visit their Alma Mater during Homecoming season one last time.

While the project is of particular interest to those with ties to UF, I think we can all appreciate the artistic merits of the photos…even if they aren’t technically illusions. For more pictures and information on how the school has changed over the years,  be sure to visit the homepage of the UF, Then & Now project.

Have any of you ever tried to make your own then & now photographic projects? I’ve always wanted to, but have never had the time to set up the shots just right.

The coin, made from painted and lacquered wood, was created at a 20:1 scale to an ordinary 50 cent Euro piece, meaning everything appears to be 20 times smaller than it is in actuality.

Here’s how the team’s coin mover looked in between setting up the shots above.

The Skrekkogle art design group responsible only made one coin so far, but they say they may make more and put them up for sale if they get enough requests. So, if you want to be able to make your own images like these, you’d better head over to their site and start asking them to sell you one.

In the meanwhile, here are a few images showing what it took to make the original coin.

What do you guys think, would you be interested in purchasing your own giant coin so you could make your own cool illusions? I’m sure it would also make a great conversation starter while sitting around your home between uses.

These well-designed costumes are made with little more than cardboard, glue and paint. But they are still incredibly visually striking when viewed from the side.

In fact, the costumes are all the rage at the Otakon Convention where they managed to stand out even when put together with other pixelized costumes, like these Minecraft characters.

The use of multiple layers of cardboard to allow for maximum movement make these costumes look far more like the real video game characters they were made to represent.

On an interesting side note, “Chozo,” the name of the bird-like characters that served as surrogate parents of Metroid hero Samus Aran, actually means “race of bird-humans” in Japanese. Although, they admittedly don’t look very birdish in their 8-bit forms.

If you’ve noticed that all the pictures up until this point were taken from the side, there’s a good reason for that. The illusion only works from the side, as it would have been practically impossible to make 8 bit characters like these look so realistic in a 360 view. Even the game was made as a side-scroller originally.

But in case you’re curious just what the costume looked like from the front, allow me to destroy the illusion for you. On the upside, at least you can see how it is operated so well.

And here’s a shot of the Samus Aran costume while it was being constructed. As you can tell, the work that went into these is undeniably impressive.

If you were going to make any 8 bit character into a pixelated costume, who would you choose? Personally, I think I’d go for Tails from Sonic the Hedgehog. He was always my favorite.

But as advertisers always like to take the work of famous artists and repurpose it to promote their own products, it is not entirely surprising that this technique has since been incorporated into billboards. Of course, that’s not to say these ads aren’t artistic in themselves. After all, it takes a lot of thought and energy to design something that will be displayed outside, but only be visible at certain times of the day.

As a matter of fact, this particular New Castle billboard was created by another set of artists, Ellis Gallagher and Pablo Power. It is made up of more than 3000 bottle caps and can only be seen at night when the external light shows on it at exactly the right angle.

Believe it or not, this billboard is in my town and I still haven’t even had a chance to see it. I think it’s time I head out that way to enjoy the illusion in person.

Earlier this month, a report was released, showing that the moon may be 200 million years younger than researchers previously believed, dating at about 4.36 billion years old. This information came from the detailed inspection of a moon rock that was brought back to Earth by the Apollo 16 astronauts back in 1972. The discovery only applies if the moon was in fact created when a Mars-sized rock crashed into the still molten Earth and shot debris into orbit around us. Since this is the current theory most scientists believe, it means that either the collision occurred much later than they thought, or that the moon was created some other way entirely.

Of course, since the dawn of time, children have looked up at the moon and fantasized about being able to pluck it from the sky if only they had ladder tall enough. That’s why I love this playful series of images by photographer Laurent Lavender showing people interacting with the moon in all kinds of ways. We’ve featured some of his images before and while they may not be the strongest illusions featured here, they are stunning photos that truly capture the childhood feeling of being able to reach out to the moon and turn it in to a new toy!

Check the below gallery for rest of the shots:

One of the most famous non-divine examples of this phenomenon was the Old Man of the Mountain located in The White Mountains of New Hampshire. If you were wondering why I chose to say “was” instead of “is,” it’s because the Old Man is no more after the face fell from the cliff side in May of 2003. Even so, the face is still remembered by all of the world and it was such a major part of New Hampshire’s identity that it was used as the image on their state quarters that were released in 2000.

Here’s a composite image of the Old Man of the Mountain before and after the rock face crumbled.

If you’re looking for a similar natural illusion that is still standing, you can always head to Ebihens, France and explore the much less famous Apache Head in the Rocks pictured here.

Do any of you guys know other places where you can find human faces in nature?

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?