When you walk around the “boxes” and view them from another angle, you quickly realize that Krystina Naylor took two uniquely shaped sculptures and then painted them to perfectly match their surrounding locations in the gallery so they appear as boxes when viewed from the right angle.

And that’s when you realize that these plain cardboard boxes are actually clever works of art that examine the viewer’s perception of the world they live in. And isn’t that what all good art is supposed to accomplish?

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.

Artist Liu Bolin smiles as he prepares to demonstrate an art installation by blending in with vegetables displayed on the shelves at a supermarket in Beijing November 10, 2011. Liu, also known as the Vanishing Artist, started practising being invisible by means of optical illusions more than six years ago.

You’ve probably seen most of Liu’s camouflage installations, but just in case you missed some – click on the image below and browse our #Liu Bolin archive:

Which one’s your favorite? Do you ever have a hard time finding the person in the pictures?

You’ve probably seen most of Liu’s camouflage installations, but just in case you missed some – click on the image below and browse our #Liu Bolin archive:

Concerning our beloved website, I decided to give a little recap of past month and things that kept me occupied. So let’s start with some of the main changes:

• iPad + iPhone universal app has been revamped. Description page has also been built from scratch.
• Facebook fan-group proved to be great success. Tons of optical illusion submissions and 1,500 fans.
• Twitter followers finally started rolling in, and I finally started to understand how Twitter works.
• Our self hosted video player gives me freedom to post much more video illusions than I used to.
• With Facebook’s plans to take over the Internet, I’ve played along and implemented F-Share.

We all know Liu's incredible talent for camouflage. It is almost impossible to spot him from such a distance.

Some of the Liu Bolin’s camouflages you might have missed:

How many toads can you see in this photograph?

Check out National Geographic’s gallery with more camouflaged insects:

Liu Bolin is able to blend into any surroundings - no matter how complicated they might be!

Liu Bolin’s Camouflage-artwork Gallery

The artist, Liu Bolin is a young Beijing based artist who has exhibited primarily in China until now. Recently, he finished up a show at Eli Klein fine art in New York showcasing a variety of his pieces including some form the series ‘camouflage’. The collection is an exploration of human nature and animal instincts which features Chinese citizens painted to blend into their surroundings. The subjects are covered head to toe in paint, camouflaging themselves in front of the Chinese flag, a billboard or downtown Beijing. Last three photos greatly remind of Invisible Cloak, we already covered.