Illusion of Many Effects

Joseph Mohmed created something very simple, yet astonishing. By opening the picture full size, and scrolling up and down very fast, I managed to see a scary black widow spider. This is probably only one effect among dozens. Be careful not to stare at it for too long, or your head may start hurting. You can easily get hallucination effect as well. Let’s give Joseph a chance to describe it:

“I was messing around in Photoshop a long time ago and got this by making a half black/half white canvas and using the twirl filter a bunch. There’s quite a few effects you can get by doing different things, though looking at it is already weird as hell. Try moving your head around while looking in the center, or keeping your eyes in the middle for 15 seconds then looking at a wall and blinking repeatedly. Oh and good job with the website and all that, I got the new widget in my Dashboard”.

72 Replies to “Illusion of Many Effects”

  1. This is one of the best illusions on the site. It seems to vibrate randomly when you stare at it, and then stretch. When u stare at it for 15 seconds and then look at a wall and blink rapidly, you can see something that looks like a flower. pretty cool

  2. Yeah it ‘s once again awesome!
    First it did’nt work for me either

    —> you have to move it up and down very quick. It’s not necessary to move it al the way up and back all the way down. Just garb the side-bar (with left mouse button) and move it a little bit up and donw. Just let the picture vibrate…

  3. >> how does that work? anyone know?

    Your brain doesn’t like moving complex shapes. If he doesn’t want to have a headache, he has to simplify the shape (with a maximum of horizontal and vertical line). You see a spider, but it’s just a coincidence (oblic lines were “rounded” to a horizontal or vertical direction).

  4. Wow! That’s amazing! I also noticed that when you look at the center for a prolonged period of time, it seems that the edges are bulging in and out.

    Keep up the good work Vurdlak,

    NYIslanders2121

  5. I see a comic book style action star shape… like the cheesey ‘Bang!’ thingies.

    saw the spider too, and the halucination

  6. very nice illusion!

    On my google widget, the illusion wont come up. It just says “Invalid data”, but if i click on it it comes to the site. I dont know what wrong with it!

  7. if you stare at it for a while and close your eyes you can see something that kinda looks like the sun

  8. I used to make op-art paintings like this illusion. My favorite was where I hid the names of song titles in a particularly psychedelic design. I might have some of these paintings in storage.

  9. Thats really amazing I’ve seen something similar by Akiyoshi Kitaoka, can anyone see colours or is it just me, maybe it is somthing to with the monitor because I doubt it would happen on paper

  10. “Keep up the good work Vurdlak”
    I’m the one that made it >:(

    “Count all the lines without help from mouse =]”
    2

  11. This is jsut you seeing waves like magneitc waves, this makes it look like it is a spider or a flower etc.

  12. wow I still see a low transparency of this image over everything I look at 5 minutes after looking at it.

  13. I tried opening the image. Bad idea. I almost had seizure and when I clicked “back” the screen looked distorted.

  14. aaaaaah spider! :D great illusion, it does so many things! it has a hidden spider, it ripples when u look at it and if u stare at it for a few seconds and then the writing above it, the writing seems to fold in at the centre!

  15. IS the spider simply an artifact from the digitilisation of the curves. I don’t think you would necessarily get it from a print?

  16. after staring at the pic i got soo dizzy and everything for a few secs looked so blurry around the edges…neva lookin at stuff like that again!! but they r actually quite cool…:)

  17. look at it for a while and then look at the page…everything will look like that spiral…dizzy…and if u stare at the centre, the spirals will pulse

  18. i was staring at the spiral for a moment then snapped out of it then i scrolled down to the comments and the whole page was all distorted like a black hole effect in the center whoa.

  19. AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!I saw a flower!If you stare at it and move your head in a circle, you see weird shapes!!!

  20. When I look at it for a long time then look at the writing on top explaning what it is, the writing looks like it’s going in, you have to try it…

  21. I saw the spider too, but it didn’t seem to work very well – wasn’t that scary. “keeping your eyes in the middle for 15 seconds then looking at a wall and blinking repeatedly” was super sweet. Thanks Joseph.

  22. look at the center for 15 seconds …then look at the wall ..blink few times u’ll see man(stick man shape) with his arms up lol no kidding

  23. i saw three effects
    1.a gothic cross
    2.widow (with scrolling)
    3.after moving away the world seemed distorted…

  24. Hey there
    DO THIS stare at this spiral for a while and than look at the writing it will do ….. just do it

  25. The illusion produced by scrolling the image seems, to me, to be the moire pattern that you get by overlaying two identical fine-lined spirals.

    I think it’s a persistence of vision effect, in that your visual system ‘remembers’ the first spiral when the second spiral appears.

    I see the spider, probably because I use a scroll-wheel that jumps the image by 3 text lines.

    The other illusions seen by other viewers I think may be due to the rate at which they scroll the image.

  26. Just tested out my theory and got a variety of illusions by sliding the scroll bar at varying rates.

    I also got color illusions by jittering my scroll wheel back and forth rapidly.

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