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:

Youtuber who goes under the name of brusspup noticed how this illusion has been around for a long time but always in the form of an image. His goal was to take it away from a flat piece of paper and turn it into a real, life-sized illusion that people could interact with. Obviously, brusspup has succeeded. He even included a scaled-down template for us to download and play with (file courtesy – brusspup).

Here’s how the author explained the effect and what he has done to achieve it:

The illusion works because of the “shadow” that falls on the checkerboard. Lets think of the square that the shadow falls on. Now picture that the shadow doesn’t exist: you would see a light colored square surrounded by the dark colored squares. But when the shadow falls on top of that light colored square, the shadow causes the shade to become darker but it also causes the surrounding darker squares to become darker. So within the shadow region the brightness and darkness of the squares are still relative to one another. But they are no longer relative to the squares that lie outside of the shadow.

So if you were able to pick up the middle square and move it to one of the outside dark squares, they would be 2 different shades, But the trick is ..that when you move the square you are moving it WITH the shadow still printed on the square. So now you’ve moved it out of its relative area, outside of the shadow region (but with the shadow still printed on the square) ..to the area where it’s the same shade as the “dark” square.

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?

Although Jason M Tangen, Sean C Murphy and Matthew B Thompson (the authors of this scientific study) —have yet to fully explain the illusion they discovered, it seems as if it happens because we’re only given a short period of time to examine each picture. For some reason our brain tries to differentiate the two faces that we’re seeing, and to do so (in such short time interval) —it ends up exaggerating the features of each face.

This reminds me of something that can often be seen in real life: have you ever noticed how girls prefer to hang out with other girls they find less attractive (than what they think of themselves)? I guess this study may have touched the tip of an iceberg, and eventually prove how woman’s intuition understands the way our male brain operates. By aggressively differentiating and making choices – in the end we often end up dating girls we wouldn’t normally choose (under different circumstances). Crazy, right? I’d just like to know whether this works the other way round? Do you think us guys feel more secure when we approach girls, while having a less prominent sidekick by our side?

We describe a novel face distortion effect resulting from the fast-paced presentation of eye-aligned faces. When cycling through the faces on a computer screen, each face seems to become a caricature of itself and some faces appear highly deformed, even grotesque. The degree of distortion is greatest for faces that deviate from the others in the set on a particular dimension (eg if a person has a large forehead, it looks particularly large). This new method of image presentation, based on alignment and speed, could provide a useful tool for investigating contrastive distortion effects and face adaptation — Jason M Tangen

The lead artist behind this work is Tracy Lee Stum, who happens to hold a Guinness World Record for the largest chalk painting by a single individual (as opposed to the largest chalk drawing by a group, which is featured on Moillusions here). Yeah, she’s pretty impressively talented whether working with a group, like she did on this Mouse Trap project, or working alone, like she did on the record-winning Last Supper piece below.

So let’s see if I can fix this with today’s post! It appears the Swedish artist Erik Johansson has joined the pavement chalk-masters wagon with his incredible optical illusion in the center of Stockholm. It tricks you into believing that the giant hole has opened up in the middle of the main city square. The illusion measures 32 by 18 metres and is located in Sergels torg square. Check some of the shots as well as accompanying video after the jump:

I’ve always been quite fascinated by perspective illusions and some time ago I got an idea of trying to realize one in a public space. My idea was to put up a photo in an environment and actually trick people that it would have depth. Street illusions aren’t new, but I wanted to try and make it as a photo instead of a mere drawing – Johansson

While some of the passers-by haven’t even noticed the illusion, others who have had the luxury of viewing the huge illusion from above beforehand, seem to have had a lot of fun with it as the video below shows. Now why is it that every other 3d chalk drawing master ends up drawing holes in the pavement?

Blur Effect

Photoshop has made it so that anyone can take a mediocre photograph, upload it to the computer and end up with a great shot after a little editing. While it’s a great step forward for photographers and amateurs alike, it has led to a lot of “professional” photographers who don’t really know what it takes to make a photo great from the start – without all the bells and whistles of photo editing software.

Fortunately, there are a number of talented photographers out there that know how to make a great photograph without any additional editing. Occasionally, those photographers decide to show off their skills by trying to do crazy Photoshop-style effects without using anything but their camera. Artist Henry Hadlow took this idea to the extreme by making up his own Photoshop window with the help of a few friends.

The first pic is perhaps the simplest, mimicking a blur tool by simply messing with the focus depth in the shot, but the erase and color change tools took a lot of creativity and dedication to put together.

This last picture isn’t by Henry, but is instead the Flickr user wandaaaa‘s interpretation of a real-life Photoshop window with all kinds of tools open. Personally, my favorite touch is the paint tubes spread out over on the right.

While I’m on the subject, I just want to wrap up these fun projects with a stop-motion video showing you how to make cookies with Photoshop.

Perhaps, it might be best if I just let you watch this short, yet professional video BBC produced. It explains the whole deal, and includes some real-life examples of McGurk effect in action. Have we just “discovered” a whole new field of optical illusions to be showcased on this site? Could be… BTW, it might take some time before the video loads. It’s somewhat large, comparing to our previous video illusions!

Anyway, check out how perspective plays with us in the following photo! The soldiers appear so close to each other, yet the difference in their size suggest different! BTW, there is a bonus Easter-Egg animation called “Superman Experience” hidden somewhere inside this article… let’s see how many of you can find it ;D

So what’s going on here? One thing about Dutch artist M.C. Escher was his ability to twist our brains with his optical illusions. The “Waterfall”, which was created back in 1961 is an impossible drawing showing what appears to be water running uphill before descending back onto a watermill wheel. You can see how the original looks on paper here. But what if we caught a glimpse of it created in real life? Has McWolles really achieved the impossible? Check the video below to see the physical version of Escher’s Waterfall. It is as if McWolles made one that actually works. Being honest, I just can’t understand where is the catch. Does it have something to do with camera’s angle (it never changes during the video), can it be that CGI was used? It almost gives you brain whiplash just thinking about it!

The video you see below was produced by Leo Burnett’s advertising agency in São Paulo, Brazil and was done for Samsung to advertise their printers. Seems that agencies started using illusions much more frequently in their approach lately! Does it mean we can expect much more professionally produced optical illusion content in the future? Let’s just wait and see!

It seems that people are remarkably bad at noticing when moving objects change in brightness, color, size, or shape. The researchers present a new visual illusion that “causes objects that had once been obviously dynamic to suddenly appear static,” and that “demonstrates the tight coupling of motion and object appearance.” The results have implications for everything from video game design to the training of pilots.

Play the movie below, while looking at the small white speck in the center of the ring. At first, the ring is motionless and it’s easy to tell that the dots are changing color. When the ring begins to rotate, the dots suddenly appear to stop changing. But in reality they are changing the entire time. Take a look, it’s marvelous!

You should check the Checker Board video, and some other works by greeenpro2009 if you already haven’t – I promise you loads of professionally created content and interesting selection of illusions showcased.

What I have here for you today, is a DIY tutorial for an illusion we already featured once in the past. It’s a rather simple, but extremely effective illusion, and the best thing about it – you can make one yourself! Once again Instructables prepared awesome step-by-step tutorial for you to download.

As you will see, our brain has a significant role of processing objects based on their surroundings. This is exactly what lights the fire for this illusion. When you place small paper ovals in front of a moving paper background, they appear to change shape, and undulate right in front of your eyes. Just look how they wiggle! Check this short video that shows the full effect. Btw, you can see more of greeenpro2009′s optical illusions if you check out his YouTube channel.

I’m sure you’ll quickly realize the magic behind this video, yet with all our experience, and after seeing so many illusions here, my brain simply doesn’t allow me to see the cube in its true nature. How about you? Can you force yourself to see it properly?