May 2011 ~ Pic Illusions

Monday, 30 May 2011

Disappearing Dots Poster

21:31 Rishi Aggarwal No comments

Disappearing Dots Poster

Here’s one you probably missed seeing in the wild! Check out what Oxy did as part of their “Disappearing Dots” campaign. Sure, the effect has been more than re-re-cycled on our site, but the idea behind it qualifies it as very smart optical illusion advertising! Old-timers will probably remember how Ariel did something similar back in the old days… Anyway, focus on the bottle for half a minute, and see the surrounding dots completely disappear! When you’re done, you might want to check similar ones (links in this text and color adapting category).

Chalk Drawing That Won Guinness

06:55 Rishi Aggarwal No comments

I can’t believe we missed this one – Qi Xinghua is a Chinese 3D Chalk artist (first in his country) whose painting entitled Lions Gate Gorge earned him an entry in the Guinness Book of Records for the largest 3D painting in the world! I’m not exactly sure how fresh this information is, as I could swear we’ve seen bigger. Still, with 23 meters in width, 32 meters in length and over 6 meters in height, we can’t ignore hard work Qi invested into this masterpiece. This 3D painting was presented at the Baiyan Wanda Plaza shopping-mall in Guangzhou (China), and it took Qi more than a month to finish the project. Oh, and one more interesting fact: apparently some people reported dizziness, during their “rope balancing”.

Vintage “Pin-up Ladies” Photo

07:15 Rishi Aggarwal No comments

Just when I decided how it would be much more professional if I invested more energy investigating origins and sources of our forthcoming illusions I got this interesting submission, only to find out I haven’t got a slightest clue how it came to be :( Don’t get me wrong, this vintage photo looks amazing, it’s just that neither the person who submitted it (nor I) couldn’t find out who and when created it.
Anyway, be sure to comment if you have the lacking info. If you concentrate only on the “illusion”, you might feel somewhat disappointed, but hopefully this photo as a whole will entertain you for a moment or two.
The good news is, I’ve started to approach this blog in much more serious manner. I’ve spent the last few days in search for some quality help, as I feel the moment has come this project overgrew my capacities. Don’t want to spill any bombastic news before the right moment arrives, but if all turns well, you might see some improvements in content and concept over the following days ;D Keep following us, as your presence is the main motivator for me as a person running this blog. Once again, many thanks for taking your time to visit this site!

Mask Of Love

07:13 Rishi Aggarwal No comments

Each year in May, Vision Sciences Society holds its Best Illusion of The Year contest and this year’s absolute winner was an illusion by Jordan Suchow and George Alvarez from Harvard. Originally called “Silencing awareness of change by background motion” (or shorter “Silencing Illusion”) is something we already talked about few months ago, so in this post I shall concentrate on another piece that made it all the way to the final round.
Created by Gianni Sarcone, Courtney Smith and Marie-Jo Waeber, Venetian mask below holds an interesting secret! Before we begin, I’d like to ask if you notice anything special in it? Observe carefully! Now if I told you how surprising number of people miss noticing that the main component of the mask is actually composed of two distinct faces – a man and a woman kissing one another, how would you react? Apparently, once the viewer discerns two individual faces, his/her brain will flip between two possible interpretations of the mask, making the viewer perceive two faces or one face in alternation. This kind of illusion, where the viewer experiences two equally possible interchangeable stable states in perception, is called bistable illusion. If you weren’t able to see the two lovers, you may find the solution here.