Mighty Optical Illusions » Lego

Lego Penrose Stairs Illusion

Vurdlak — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 23:29:15 +0000

Seems when M. C. Escher created his famous lithograph Ascending and Descending (all the way back in 1960.), he didn’t have a slightest clew how many people will get inspired by this exceptional deceiving work! Just look how cute R. Watson’s escher-inspired Lego Penrose turned out to be!

But what I also think, is that it couldn’t hurt encouraging your little toddlers to try and construct something similar on their own! Not only will you motivate them to “mathematically” analyze the 3D space, they will also learn the beauty behind optical illusions, and educate themselves while doing it! When Escher chose to construct this deception, he placed the staircase on the roof of a building and structured the building to convey an impression of conformity to strong (but inconsistent) vanishing points. He has the right vanishing point higher than the left one.

Lego Checkers Illusion

Vurdlak — Mon, 21 Feb 2011 16:37:32 +0000

There is this guy on Flickr… he recreates strange things using nothing but Lego. Remember the little mushroom-fellow from Super Mario Bros? He seems to be his favorite! But one of his works fully captured my attention. Check out the checkerboard below! In the beginning of this site we’ve introduced Seemingly Bent category (one that holds all those vertical lines that seem bent, but aren’t), and there were bunch of illusions posted under the wing category. The only problem with those is that they start repeating themselves very quickly, so imagine my joy when I visited andy_0306uk’s gallery! For those of you lacking experience, all of the lines and checkers below are perfectly parallel. It’s those darn cogs that make the imaginary bulge! If you don’t trust me, just check this vid!

Impossible Lego Creations

Vurdlak — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 14:03:36 +0000

Before I started writing this, I’ve browsed our #Lego collection for fun. It has dozens of interesting posts, some of them even I completely forgot about. What I’ve noticed is that most of the themes repeat themselves, specially impossible triangles (I think there is no need to post any more triangles for some time now). Anyhow, I’ve collected rest of the unpublished Lego illusions, and decided to close the trend. First one is obviously most complex, but I have some doubts whether photoshop has been used. Rest of the collection should be free of digital manipulation, but fortunately I have you to judge. Can you guess how each of them was built?

Castle of Illusions

Vurdlak — Sun, 27 Dec 2009 18:36:36 +0000

Here and then, Internet websites dedicated to LEGO organize a contest, where people can submit their entires, resulting with some very creative submissions. Flickr user named 2MuchCaffeine has posted his second entry for the CCCVII contest, but what is more important (at least to us) is that his castle has number of optical illusions implemented in it’s design. Check out the first photo, and then try and spot as many optical illusions you can. I’ve also included another photo, shot under different angle, detailing how he achieved the optical illusion without using a photo editing program. Are you impressed as I am, with the amount of thought that went building this? For more LEGO illusions, check out this link.

Henry Lim’s LEGO Escher

Vurdlak — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 15:27:05 +0000

While its not possible to actually build an impossible structure with LEGOs, it might be possible to create a structure that (when viewed from the appropriate angle) would recreate the illusion. We already proved this many times, but if you are new to this site – be sure to check LEGO tag. You’ll quickly realize Henry Lim wasn’t the first individual with an idea to reproduce M.C. Escher’s works in LEGO, but can his results be among the best? This is where you come in to share your views. In September 2005, Henry was commissioned by the Hong Kong Science Museum to sculpturally recreate a series of Maurits Cornelis Escher lithographs. It was important that there should be no photographic manipulation involved – the impossible objects should be approximated via optical illusions. It took Henry about a month to build (and rebuild with glue) all four sculptures.

Henry Lim created this LEGO replica of Relativty by M.C. Escher

Check out more LEGO impossible structures here:

Few More Dice and Lego Triangles

Vurdlak — Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:44:00 +0000

I’m very proud of our previous optical illusion, and was somehow unexpectedly shocked when I found out how many of you are there, having problem recognizing colors. Hope you guys don’t have much problems with it, while living your every day life. It was very educational to find out this disability mainly occurs among male audiences. In the mean time, I found some additional impossible triangles, consisted of dice and Lego. Since we already featured both of them (similar examples), I couldn’t decide should I post these very similar ones as well. In my opinion they are both visually very nice, and it would be a shame if they got unnoticed, so I gave it a shot. By now, you should have no problem understanding how these were constructed, and hope you are aware they can be created in real life too, without using Adobe Photoshop or any similar CGI programs.

Lego Optical Illusion Collection

Vurdlak — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:33:00 +0000

Few more LEGO impossible structures for you! I have yet again included all the Lego illusions I could find on my computer. Some are better, some are mediocrity, and some of them hardly deserve to be included. It’s up to you to decide which one of these photos wins over the competition. Why I like Lego so much, is because their bricks give you endless possibilities – It’s all about individuality and imagination. That is why I post this stuff regularly. Just remember Andrew Lipson’s “Lego Relativity“, and even better “Lego Ascending“. If you keep clicking the “Next Random Illusion” button below, you may end up with dozen more similar illusions. While most of them were inspired by M.C. Escher’s work, few of them are original Impossible Objects I never saw before. Enjoy…

“Create The Impossible” by LEGO

Vurdlak — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 16:11:00 +0000

It seems LEGO finally recognized impossible object illusions as another great (optical illusion) way to promote their product. I’d like to think their inspiration came of this website – specially Escher Style category, but it’s much more likely they stumbled upon some of Andrew Lipson’s work, instead. I liked LEGO very much back being a kid, and have spent hours creating all sorts of incredible structures. I’m sorry it never occurred to me how fun would it be creating something like this. If you like these impossible creations, you’ll surely enjoy Lego Venice and these. Have to go now. Cya tomorrow!

Impossible Lego Creation

Vurdlak — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 02:35:00 +0000

Whoaa! I think I would feel uncomfortable as well, if I found myself in similar situation. This Lego guy found himself in a surrounding, his poor little brain isn’t capable to understand. But we are much more experienced with optical illusions, aren’t we? This is piece of cake for a regular Mighty Illusions fan. Who’s gonna explain this illusion first? If you’re memory servers you well, you’ll remember we already had some lego illusions in the past, as well as similar impossible structures made of various materials. Which impossible structure was your favorite? Browse through dozens of them in appropriate category.

San Marco Square, Venice

Vurdlak — Wed, 05 Jul 2006 16:50:00 +0000

The image below gives you San Marco Square (Piazza San Marco), which is the main square in Venice. It is surrounded by chic sidewalk cafes and fancy suvenier shops. Although it looks like this picture has nothing to do with optical illusions, infact it has…a lot! If you spotted what’s it all about, post your comment, and if you’re not sure, jump inside this article and scroll down to see more pictures of Venice, Italy. And then perhaps, you’ll notice what was the catch. Enjoy :)

Lego Land “Relativity” Inspired by MC Escher

Vurdlak — Fri, 12 May 2006 05:10:00 +0000

Daniel Shiu and Andrew Lipson must have worked their butt off to construct these wonderfull Lego recreations of Escher’s work! They started this project after they finished rendition of Escher’s “Ascending and Descending”, making it 4th Escher picture rendered in LEGO. No camera magic tricks (like David Blaine uses ;), but the picture was taken from exactly the right place. Be sure first to view original Escher’s picture “Relativity” and then jump to Lipson’s original website, where he provided many amazing pictures of their creations! Enjoy!

Lego Escher Illusion

Vurdlak — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 23:15:00 +0000

If you didn’t notice at first glance, knights in this lego castle appear to climb infinte stairs. Is it just an optical illusion or pure magic? I would really love to hear your opinnion and comments on how this lego reproduction of Escher’s “Ascending” was built? Don’t forget to jump inside this article to see original Escher’s picture and few more cool pictures. Also visit this link for more real-life impossible structures – [via]!

The Illusion resambles the one where man keeps climbing the stairs: