Mighty Optical Illusions

Tears of Mother Earth Illusion

2009-11-10T13:53:23Z

A dramatic picture taken by Michael Nolan has been dubbed the face of Mother Nature crying on a canvas of melting ice and cascading water on a Norwegian Glacier. Randy Schutt discovered this amazing photo which shows a crying face in an ice cap located on Nordaustlandet, in the Svalbard archipelago of Norway. The tears of this natural sculpture were created by a waterfall of glacial water cascading from one of the face’s eyes, thus painting an alarming picture warning the world about the effects of global warming. Michael Nolan is a marine photographer and environmental lecturer. He has captured this picture while on an annual voyage to observe the glacier and surrounding wildlife. It’s best to quote Nolan’s words on this:

This is how one would imagine mother nature would express her sentiments about our inability to reduce global warming. It seemed an obvious place for her to appear, on a retreating ice shelf, crying.”

Attacking Lion Optical Illusion

2009-11-09T16:10:35Z

What we see here, is a hungry lion jumping on to the bonnet of an open-topped truck, snarling straight into the faces of safari family. The amazing part is they just roar with laughter. Normally, placing stone-cold masochists on an illusion oriented blog makes no sense. But this close encounter of the furred kind is not all it seems. The trick is that apparently fearless wildlife watchers are actually safely protected behind a wall of reinforced glass. Only the front of the truck is placed inside the big cat’s territory.

Why are they laughing? I would be terrified if some predator jumped on my vehicle!

You’ll have to agree with me on this one; from a certain angle it really looks as if the visitors are about to become lunch. This illusory installation is one of the main attractions at Werribee open range zoo near Melbourne, Australia. Spokesmen of the zoo said once:

The cut-off Land Rover was stuck either side of the glass wall as a bit of fun and it’s proved a big hit – especially with the kids. Everyone wants to get their picture taken looking like they’re going to be eaten.”

Best Optical Illusion EVER!

2009-11-06T14:03:41Z

Reading the title, and understanding it came directly from me, I suppose adds some weight to the actual Leopard Illusion you see below. It’s hard for me to explain how this illusion came to be, without revealing the actual solution, thus ruining the surprise-effect for you. There is much relevant info and background for it, but for now I’ll retain myself just on revealing the author behind it – the magnificent Craig Tracy. First thing you’ll notice is that it’s not some photo of an actual animal, rather a realistically painted picture. But you’re still far from seeing the illusion. Only tip I can give you, is that leopard’s eyes were painted on a concrete floor. I suggest you examine the picture more closely before seeing this final hint. I’ll monitor the forthcoming ratings, and am eager to see if you agree with me that this must be one of the best optical illusions ever created!

Wallace and Gromit: 20th Anniversary

2009-11-04T15:47:31Z

I did something extremely important yesterday. It took more than 6 hours of tempering with Mighty Optical Illusions source code, but the results have already proven themselves. You might ask “What was it? The website still looks perfectly identical!”. Well, in order to fully load the page previously, you had to wait for all the ads to load first, and only then the whole page was constructed in your browsers. This took some time, and many of you argued how the website is too slow. I made big changes yesterday, and now the website loads MUCH faster. Have you noticed this? I managed to place all the adds at the end of our HTML code, so now ads load separately only after the complete website is shown to you.

This means you get the content immediately, and you can proceed reading articles instantly, while the ads are still loading themselves in the sidebar. Hope some of you appreciate this. At least the impression count in my stats states so. With this move I have reduced my income significantly, but your satisfaction is still primary to me. I would just appreciate any kind of feedback, and please report any problems/glitches you might have noticed.

For the illusion of the day, this picture was spotted by Syed Ali (cool name dude!) on a major internet homepage. It was released in honor of Wallace and Gromit 20th anniversary. Except from showing two of the main characters, this picture contains additional subliminal message. If you “decipher” the message, you’ll quickly realize which major website used the pic. Happy hunting!

Knight in The Woods Illusion

2009-11-02T18:00:31Z

The secret lies in the branches

I don’t feel much inspired for writing today, better yet – last few days I was completely hit by writers block. Above all this, my keypad stopped responding when I enter “space” tab. I think there is some kind of food element stuck beneath it, but who knows. So after I wrote this article, I needed to copy-paste each “space” line between words and construction elements. Think about it for a second! How much of unnecessary work am I talking here.

But I’m not gonna allow such a trivial problem stand between me and this blog. No way! I already purchased Dell’s wireless keyboard, and hopefully it will arrive tomorrow. Check the photo I linked, and please give me some feedback if you’ve had the opportunity to use it by any chance. I just hope I didn’t make the wrong decision, based only on viewing a single photo of it.

Not to bore you with my personal “problems”, I chose this simple picture (you see on your left) for today. I think the illusion is very simple to see, but the idea behind is very nice if you ask me. Hopefully you skipped reading the title, the descriptive tags beneath, and will solve the optical illusions yourselves. What are the tree branches hiding?

You can find some related optical illusions here, here and here. Enjoy!

Google Street View Illusion

2009-10-31T16:35:31Z

Google Street View Illusion

Apart from playing with design, I’m obsessed with new internet trends and emerging technologies. As much as I love sharing original illusions with you, I’m even more thrilled when I get the opportunity to introduce you with something you probably never thought of using when searching for optical illusions. Hope you approve my style, where I try to fuse our illusion topic as much as I can with modern options.

I think it’s refreshing to see our standard content, using different approach occasionally. Our friend, João Marques took his time to introduce us to Google Street View. By now, all of you used Google Maps at some point of your life. Well, at some major cities Google’s mobile crew took high res photos of surrounding areas, while cruising down the local streets. This caused a lot of controversy, as sometimes citizen privacy was invaded, but on the other hand – it helped cops catch crooks in Netherlands.

João has been a daily follower of MOI for some months, and decided to give something back. Before presenting us with the illusion, he thanked us for managing this website with wisdom, “posting only very interesting stuff.” Move around this interactive window, and try to spot what João found so interesting…

I was spending some time in Google Street View, when I saw some guys doing something strange in an window. I zoomed more and found that it was a mural painting, and was completely tricked. – João

Village Turned into Optical Illusion

2009-10-29T15:45:13Z

We’ve featured Felice Varini dozen of times, so I encourage you to check some of our previous articles to learn the background and goals this particular artist set for himself. It’s because I dislike repeating myself. In his newest installation, the buildings in the town of Vercorin in the Swiss Alps contribute to this impressive piece. The set was called Cercle et suite d’éclats. But what I recon interests you the most, is how all of this was turned into practice. Well, the pattern was projected on the town from the vantage point, and then traced and painted. If you shoot a photo from the same spot in daylight, you’ll quickly realize how the town looks flat – almost like a postcard. The interesting part is how he got the whole town to approve this? Don’t miss the panoramic view on Varini’s website. More photos from different angles are included below…

A Fun Coincidence on iGoogle

2009-10-28T12:05:57Z

What I share with you today isn’t strictly an optical illusion, but still an interesting coincidence that happened to one of our friends – Benjamin Bowmer. I thought it was worth sharing. As you all know by now, some of our great assets include “Optical Illusion of The Day” widgets. People download these free little applications, put them on their computer desktops, Facebook or MySpace profiles, iPhone etc… and then each day get new optical illusions from us. If you missed it, be sure to download one for yourself. Anyway, as Ben stated in his email (quotes included beneath the screenshot) he had iGoogle gadget for years now, but one day when he opened his Google Homepage he was in for a surprise. If you remember, back in September we posted Summer Stockings illusion, and this is the one Ben saw, except there was a little more to it then others of us had access to…

Benjamin got a nice surprise when he opened his iGoogle homepage.

Good day mate, I’ve had your iGoogle gadget on my home page for a couple of years now, but never have I gotten such a nice surprise when I opened the internet. Nothing heaps fancy, but still a nice coincidence I think, and I figured you’d appreciate it. Keep up the good work. – Ben

Illusion of Shrinking Munchkins

2009-10-26T14:45:50Z

Check out this twisted picture above! I have no clue whatsoever, what should these little figures stand for. They are probably munchkins of kind, or some strange fertility symbols of once great civilization. But the best part is that this doesn’t concern us at all! The strange illusion that comes into play, has much to do with relative sizes. Apparently, if you look at the above photo from left to right, you’ll get impression that the slimmest figure on the left is taller in size than the fattest figure on the right. I hope this will work for you, as it has worked for me!

Those of you who got to know me by time, probably noticed how great deal of my concentration is orientated towards graphic design of this blog. It takes more struggle than you think to keep the visual minimalism, while in the same time staying in race with internet trends, providing more and more additional features for you to play with (rating widgets, share buttons, comments, links, etc.). Often I rule out some hefty features that could help push our traffic sky-high, just because they would hurt our graphical zen. I’m talking about “Digg this” and “Retweet” counters. Somehow I find blogs cluttered with share widgets – annoying at best.

But yesterday, though, I have found acceptable and non-intrusive solution to implement “Share on Facebook” option. I’m sure you’ll agree with me how discreet this new button really is. In fact, if I didn’t point it to you, I’m certain you wouldn’t even notice it. It’s located just beneath the title of each article, and if you click it, a new pop-up window appears where you can easily share the current optical illusion with your Facebook friends. I hope you’ll get accustomed to this new feature, and I would maximally appreciate if you tested it for me, and then shared your experience.

Georges Rousse’s Illusory Illusions

2009-10-26T12:13:59Z

It’s me Justine again, sharing my second post on Mighty Optical Illusions website. You’d think that being an illusionist would be enough for any artistic person who enjoys tweaking reality. But Georges Rousse, Paris artist born 2 years after the end of The Second World War, has taken it a step further. He is creating illusions of an illusion!

Back in the eighties, Rousse started out as an ordinary laboratory photographer, but then moved on and began taking photographs of vacant car parks, empty roads and condemned buildings.

After a while an idea hit him, so he started painting figures of people on walls of these buildings, and then photographed these. Later on, he switched from figures to illusory shapes. Soon he grew tired of all this, and began superimposing photographs on spaces, realities on other realities.

I find Rousse’s combination of photography and illusions, combined with installation art somewhat confusing – perhaps annoying even. It’s impossible to really know what you are seeing ,ever! I’m not sure I would enjoy any of his works hanging from my walls…

Take the above photo for example. At first glance it looks as if one is looking at the scene through a circular filter. A closer look reveals that the shapes in the circle appear to be entirely separated from their background, as if an unrelated photograph has been superimposed on the area behind.

Nothing in the “normal” part of the area lines up with a single part in the white photo. I don’t know about you, but I feel cheated by this kind of artifice. My eyes want the circular part to fit into the main picture so much, but it just won’t! You may find more of Rousse’s work below: