By Vurdlak on June 23, 2007, with 43 Comments
The summer came, and many of you are probably enjoying sun and recreation. I noticed a slump in our visitor count last few days, so probably thats the reason, at least I hope so. Anyone has an idea how we can bring more visitors to our community? Anyway, thats my problem, and nothing to concern you. I’ll be going to vacation in few weeks, but don’t worry – I’m bringing the laptop with me, so new illusions still will be posted each day. Like they were last year. Am I awesome or what ;) For today, spotted by Dean Bein, here are some of the most amazing Shadow Illusions created by Tim Noble and Sue Webster. Dean Bein “Hi, I don’t know if you’ve done anything on shadow illusions before but these are pretty incredible.” To get better insight how they work, you should watch this video, and see these two articles: Fukuda’s Underground Piano and Shadow Couple illusion
(43 votes)By Vurdlak on June 22, 2007, with 18 Comments
Below you can actually see two different illusions. The first, most obvious one shouldn’t be a problem to spot for those of you who already saw Walt Disney anamorphic illusion. More explanation can be found inside our Anamorphism category, more specific in the post titled “Cylinder Mirrors“. The second, less obvious illusion, is that the image reflected on the steel cylinder is in it’s origin a true optical illusion. If you don’t see it, look at this image of impossible pillars. The photo set includes two photos, where the second can be found inside this post. Original name of this art is “Reflection of an optical illusion“, and originates from Questacon, Canberra.
Concerning the site, I placed a little banner in the sidebar for our Mighty Tricks website, as requested by some visitors (so now I can stop “spamming” the threads with mighty trick’s posts). Now you can easily access both sites without waisting time looking for the correct url. Those of you who requested this fix, know what I’m talking about. Also, I did the same on the tricks website, you can go there and check it out. Enjoy!
(23 votes)By Vurdlak on June 21, 2007, with 43 Comments
My pal Rick sent me this simple photo of impossible triangles formation. This impossible construction sure looks Escher inspired, do you agree? I actually needed few minutes to figure it out. You presume it’s two triangles trapped in an impossible way, but actually it’s only one continuous line if you follow it closely. What was more important for me to announce in this post, is that Google finally accepted our “Magic Trick of The Day” gadget, and added it to its collection of most popular gadgets. You can get it from here, and simply add it to your Google Homepage. Well, this should make our Mighty Magic Tricks website little more famous. Watch out in following days for new exciting things to happen!
(11 votes)By Vurdlak on June 20, 2007, with 47 Comments
Remember our original Fruit Man illusion? Well, thanks to our commentators, more precisely Juan Luis Roldán, we found out that the original fruit man was created by French artist called André Martins de Barros. I’m not exactly sure whether these 3 posters were also created by Barros, but the style sure looks familiar. Artem sent me these photos, the guy famous for his controversial Albie’s Farm Logo from the past. At least that one got over 180 comments. Let’s see if you can beat that record today. Well, not the record actually. I think the hidden tiger still holds it with his 343 comments (and growing)! Which fruit man you like the most in this post?
(21 votes)By Vurdlak on June 19, 2007, with 104 Comments
Consider this post more of an unusual art installation, than true optical illusion. Well, this Pac-man skull you see on the right was created by artist Le Gentil Garçon titled “PacMan’s skeleton”. There are few more interesting photos inside this post, and I’m sure you would’ve guessed what they represent, even if I didn’t explain before. I like references to eighties presented in this unusual form. I don’t have much more to say, really.
Just to share with you that I passed really important exam today, so please excuse me for having lack of inspiration writing this post. I’m all drained up from learning all those synchronous and asynchronous digital automates for the exam. Sounds scary, agree? Wasn’t much of an exam, but I had to stay up all night to get all that fit in my head.
(24 votes)By Vurdlak on June 18, 2007, with 71 Comments
The original firefox illusion wasn’t very hard to spot, the rabbit one was more interesting than hard, and the recent hidden tiger optical illusion was indeed very hard for many of you. This illusion today is combination off all three! You should be able to see our little fox easily, the rabbit thinks he’s hiding, but actually he isn’t very good at it. Maybe he is under illusion he’s safe from the fox, but more frightening destiny awaits him. There is a tiger. Can you see him? Maybe there are even more animals hidden inside this beautiful art piece created by author called Rusty Rust, only I didn’t spot them. Now I’m off to post another magic trick on mighty tricks website. Found quite a few of them, just have to decide which one is the best… Enjoy!
P.S. We passed 8 million unique visitors last night! Remember it took 5 months to get to our millionth visitor, and now 11 months after, we passed another milestone of 8 million. If we continue to grow this fast, expect 100 million unique visitors in 2 years!
(28 votes)By Vurdlak on June 14, 2007, with 39 Comments
He he, I see Hidden Tiger Illusion, became instantly one of the most popular ones on this site! You people managed to post 274 comments in matter of few days. Cool! Well for today, combining photos and footage from Boing Boing, Youtube and Flickr, I compiled this article with most amazing jet and helicopter rotating blades illusion. I was inspired to write this when I received email from Eric Cole containing really interesting video (which can be found inside this article). Eric wrote:
“This could be some sort of trick with models or computers, but it looks like the shutter speed of the camera matches the rotation speed of the blades perfectly, making a nice optical illusion effect.”
First photo was taken with camera, from the inside of the flying plane. There are propeller blades that appear to be floating, and that appear in a path that is outside the normal path of the propeller. Now on to the second photo. Johnny Vulkan, the artist on Flickr, took the following photo of a Jet propeller. Is it only me, or does it seem to rotate? Look carefully, and try enlarging it to get better effect.
Today’s magic trick is also neat one. It is a video of impossible card dealing. Go check it, after you finished looking at these propellers.
(23 votes)By Vurdlak on June 14, 2007, with 26 Comments
Watch out everybody! We are near to break 8 million unique visitors! Let’s see who that lucky person will be. Really exciting, isn’t it? Let’s see what I brought you today… First I updated magic tricks website with hilarious David Blaine spoof, well actually a sequel to unbelievably popular original. Thanks to everyone that mailed me, informing me sequel exists. Those are some very talented actors, aren’t they? Then I found this illusion in my mailbox submitted by Nathan Corelli. It is really simple, yet hard to believe. Can you trust me when I quote Nathan that “both gray rectangles are of the same color”? Not so convincing, right? Well, actually if you’ve been with us from the very start, when we posted our first optical illusion, and few other similar ones, like for example “Which color is darker” and “Diamonds are Gray“, you’ll be able to understand the illusion immediately.
This is the explanation Nathan added: “The rectangle on the left is surrounded by white. The rectangle on the right is more surrounded by black. If the rectangles overlap you’ll see that they are identical. Colors appear lighter when they are surrounded by white, and darker when they are surrounded by black. This is a color comparison problem using two identical rectangles against a b&w background.”
(12 votes)
