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.

I also noticed one particular comment from few days back, suggesting I should allow you to rate posts from the homepage as well. Up until now, you were allowed to rate illusions only from inside the particular post. The reason I excluded homepage lyes in the fact that many of our posts are cut-off on the homepage. Many articles contain more than one photo, where only first one is visible on the starting page. Still, I tweaked the ratings so from now on you should also be able to vote from the homepage. Let’s see how this turns out…

But let’s quickly share the newest billboard set, one that has been circulating the net lately. As it seems, people behind Volkswagen’s ad campaigns have actually listened to our advice, and heavily implemented optical illusions into their ads! I have always been firm believer that there aren’t much better ways to capture viewer’s attention in marketing, other than using optical illusions (naked girls being an exception). Btw, I know I promised we won’t repeat the Ebbinghaus effect, but I’m aiming at broader idea here…

On the personal level, I always believed in God. In my opinion, there must be some incredible force that made all the chaos make sense. It’s just that I don’t care whether it’s name is Jesus, Buddha… or Mother Nature. I believe God is too abstract and complex for our primitive minds to understand. This is why I always thought it’s meaningless to debate over it in depth. Raised in Christian surrounding, still I never felt connected to church as an establishment. In my belief church is too narrow-minded, thus reduces the meaning of God and putts it closer to the ground just by preaching about it. I won’t go into debate what I think of a church as an establishment, but why I’m telling you all this is because I learned that there is a society of men that share the exact same views I have. By now you probably guessed I’m talking about Freemasonry.

So I studied a little, read different books with different approaches to Free Masons – both pro and con. I even read some fiction novels referring to them (Lost Symbol by Dan Brown). Finally, I came to a conclusion it’s a positive organization, if you don’t count individuals involved just with careerism in mind. If I understood their ways correctly, statistically speaking – it would be much easier to meet higher percentage of profound and educated gentleman in such surrounding than elsewhere. If some of you have deeper knowledge about the organization, feel free to send me an email. I’d love to debate some questions regarding all this, talk about science, religion, philosophy…

Optical Illusion by Yamaha

Suzanne pointed me to this video commercial recently, created exclusively for Adelaide’s leading motorcycle superstore – Coast Yamaha. The motorcycle featured in video below was loaned from Clive Langley. I have to admit, I never expected such a twist!

I have to give credit to this motorcycle company – They truly understand the power of optical illusions in advertising. In a few years, when I’m done teaching marketing PR’s how illusory campaigns easily become viral, and how powerful impact they have on their audience, hopefully I’ll manage to shift on to the next level.

Next task: lure them to send in their content to Mighty Optical Illusions website, resulting with more fresh content for our audience (You), and wider reach to their brands. My ultimate goal for near future is to get quality, professionally created illusions, while in the same time being payed for the actual content. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not getting payed for this article. But just think about it for a second. Wouldn’t it be a “win-win-win” situation (visitors-me-advertisers), if for example Yamaha had previously recognized the size of our audience, and contacted me with offer to publish this video? Perhaps they don’t need to, as this kind of stuff is virally posted across the net, free of charge. But maybe, just maybe this will change in the future! Check the Billboards section for example – wouldn’t it be logical I got payed for each of those posts?  Unfortunately, I wasn’t…

Now admit it, how many of you saw that coming? Big thanks goes to Suzanne Green for sending the clip! “Firstly I have been a fan of Mighty Illusions for a few years – and I love them. I thought of you when I saw this, done by a local ad agency and very impactful. I hope you agree.”

While we’re in the Moon illusion atmosphere (or even better – lack of it), Xavier Kreiss sent me another related one. This is what Xavier wrote: “It’s been a long time since I last contacted you! Your blog is as fascinating as it always was. This evening I was looking at some French blog, when I saw this photo of a plane going behind the moon. Of course, the illusion is due to the fact that the vapor trail, which is white, can’t be seen when it goes past the moon, which is also white – so you get the impression that the vapor is behind it. I thought it might amuse you!”

Could this plane really have passed behind the Moon?

Oh, I forgot to tell you I booked a hotel in NY, Manhattan and will be there in October with my girlfriend. Are there any New Yorkers here that can advise me what to see, where to go out, and how to get those hard to get tickets for NBA/MLB etc? Anyone wants to be our guide when we arrive?

Can you spot where the ships become arches, and vice-versa?