June 28, 2010 by Vurdlak with 15 Comments
Did you know that your mind is trained to read for meaning? Just try the following: read the sentence at right and count the letter f’s. I’ll explain this further few lines below.
After years of torture, I finally gave my last exam on Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing in Zagreb. Think of it as somewhat weaker variation of MIT. So I afforded myself a three-day vacation just to prepare for my 2-month summer vacation beginning July 15th ;) This is why you were 2 illusions short previous week.
Anyhow, I bought this book on a kiosk called “What Would Google Do” by Jeff Jarvis to see if it could help me brainstorm on some new ideas for our mega-blog. Most of the stuff was subconsciously known to me already, but it was nice to confirm some of my thoughts, and this book helped me reorganize few distribution techniques I use. I think it’s a good read for those struggling to make their blog successful. It motivated me further to orientate my work towards you, my dear audience. So expect some minor changes, and more work in a direction you asked for. I’ll begin with lowering the number of inner-links, and growing the amount of useful out-links, even though it may hurt our SEO. In the long run, these kind of things should help.
Now let’s get back to the illusion. How many times did you count the f’s? The answer is six. In case you got it wrong, then rest assured; the statement above is what caused you to get it wrong. The mind has a hard time when asked to read for specific letters, especially when those letters are in prepositions like of.
(7 votes) June 26, 2010 by Vurdlak with 59 Comments
Now here’s a good one; apparently the photo you are seeing came from a set of pictures provided by the owner of a house to some people who were looking to rent it for the weekend. They saw this picture and thought it was a lake, so were all excited and looking forward to boating and jet skiing and stuff. When they asked the owner about it, the lady emailed them back and said: “unfortunately that is not a lake, it is a wall“. Hehe, good one Katriana! Thanks for sharing…
(42 votes) June 24, 2010 by Vurdlak with 30 Comments
Frank Wijngaard from The Netherlands pointed me to this incredible Dutch shadow/mirror art artist called Diet Wiegman. As Frank explained, together with #Shigeo Fukuda, Diet Wiegman is a true pioneer in this kind of art-form. If you remember, we had some interesting shadow installations by #Tim Nobel and #Sue Webster, but Diet has brought this onto the next level. What he did, he introduced mirrors and light reflections as a part of the installation. Check some of the photos in this post to see what I mean. Hope you like this as much as I did!
(28 votes) June 23, 2010 by Vurdlak with 46 Comments
How Many Pencils Are There?
What I have prepared for you today is an old trick that plays with your brains. Most recent example we posted was when you had to count the dogs in an infinite flowing animation. Remember that? I think all of this has developed out from the Impossible Pillars illusion, one we had the chance to post at the very beginning of this site. What you have to do today, is count the pencils. That’s it, nothing special – or is it? Just how many pencils are there in this image? Can you spot where one pencil ends, and the other one starts? Think of an impossible flow-meter, if this looks to problematic…
This trick reminded me of an old story. Apparently, Americans have spent millions of dollars in search for a pen that would work in zero-gravity, on their space expeditions. It took plenty of time and resources for NASA to solve this problem. Russians, on the other hand, simply brought a pencil when they went to space. There you have it – who knows if this actually happened. Would be darn funyy if it were true. Hope we have some NASA employees among us to explain this further!
By the way, we have heavily surpassed the 3,000 subscribers mark on our Facebook fan-group, and our counter is growing fast with each minute. Glad to see so many of you invited your families and friends to join our group! I promise to keep it fresh with stuff never before seen on this site. My thanks goes to all of you who joined…
(12 votes) June 22, 2010 by Vurdlak with 29 Comments
Yup, it’s the American Psycho, also known as Christian Bale. I’m not sure whether the screenshot used in this optical illusion was taken from his Hollywood movie, or whether it’s the paparazzi shot during Christian’s Terminator rampage incident (when he went nuts on stage). If you think I’m joking, listen to the publicly available audio tape.
But all this doesn’t concern us too much, what we’re here for are the illusions. This time we have slightly different afterimage animation. Originally, authors create similar animations that switch between frames every half a minute or so. First you see colorful negative, then black and white photo appears. You get the impression black and white photo you are seeing is actually produced in color, because the afterimage was temporary burnt into your retina. This time we have exactly the same illusion, only frames switch much faster. What amazed me, is that the illusion still works – even better perhaps. To conclude this, I can assure you that there are only two frames – black and white one, and the color-negative. The more you observe, the more colors on Christian appear! P.S. You can check ultra-fast version of this, just be sure you don’t have problems with seizures or something…
(15 votes) June 21, 2010 by Vurdlak with 118 Comments
Here’s a simple one. I know you aren’t fond of them, but we have to feature them occasionally as well (it’s cause of our goal – biggest optical illusion database, remember?) Anyway, what do you see in this picture on your right? There are bunch of arrows, right? But what is so strange, is that people only notice certain colored arrows at first. This probably explains which of these two is your dominant color. I’ve noticed green arrows pointing to the right, but only after a while I’ve seen the yellow arrows pointing in opposite direction. How about you?
FYI: There are bunch of new fans pouring to our site lately. Many of them arrived via our Facebook fan-page. If you’ve missed it, be sure to join and see new illusions before they get published on our site. I use the group for submissions as well! We are very close to 3,000 fans (which is insignificant number, compared to millions who downloaded our “Optical Illusion of The Day” widget). Be sure to become our fan on Facebook, or check our widgets if you’re new! Old-timers still get a chance to rethink their widget choice (I recommend Windows sidebar gadget!)
(16 votes) June 19, 2010 by Vurdlak with 245 Comments
Spinning Girl optical illusion was the one responsible for skyrocketing our traffic back in the old days. Then we have received Spinning Man version. Unfortunately that one didn’t gain as much attention, I hoped it would. Let’s see if spinning some cats helps. User called Pech Misfortune (oh, the irony) created this animated gif using ImageReady in addition with 3D Studio Max. The illusions is simple – all you have to do is see the cat rotate in both directions. At first you may think it’s impossible, but after some practice you’ll soon be able to switch the direction with each round. I’m also interested to hear your comments about the original direction you saw the cat spin at? When I first saw this, it appeared to move clockwise. Now each time I see it – it’s just the opposite (concentrate on it’s tale to switch).
(33 votes) June 18, 2010 by Vurdlak with 12 Comments
We are well introduced with anamorphic drawings, and most of you know that #Istvan Orovitz dedicated his life to create some of the best and most complex anamorphic drawings today. This time he did something he called Atlantis. I’m not sure whether he gave us a secret map of a long lost civilization, or just some kind of plan of the city. But what I do know, is that if you follow the instructions and place cylindrical mirror on top of it, you’ll get to see what Istvan wanted you to see. I’ve included two original drawings after the jump, so be sure to print them out and play a little. Then report your findings!
(11 votes) 
