Awesome Illusions

Scott Jarvie’s handmade rugs have an incredibly simple yet brilliant pattern. When viewed at an angle, the Void Rug looks like a literal black hole on the floor. It’s available as a circular or a rectangular rug.

We know they walk down stairs, alone or in pairs, and make a slinkity sound, but we had no idea that a Slinky could be used as the centerpiece for a crowd-pleasing stage show, as this participant on a Chinese TV talent show demonstrates. Original video here.

Master of all things domino-related FlippyCat presents a fun way to make it look like you’re have way more dominoes than you actually do. The trick – like all good illusions – it’s all done with mirrors.

Dmitry Chabanov and fellow graffiti artists who joined Stenograffia 2017 painted an anamorphic illusion on an abandoned car and the structure beside it, using the checkered background typically used in photo editing applications to indicate transparency.

Tim Rowett of Grand Illusions demonstrates a cool wall calendar which appears to be covered with random dots, dashes and slashes, but actually displays the date when a plastic mask is slid over the appropriate markings.

Quirkology shares a handful of visual illusions sure to mess with your brain. We understand how most of them work, but the color changing ring in the mirror is still a totally nifty trick.

Papercraft artist Taras Lesko of VisualSpicer shows off an intricate piece of wall art which can be cut from a single sheet of paper, assuming you’ve got the X-acto skills. Think you’re up to the challenge? Buy the PDF template here.

ASAPScience shows us how human vision is highly imperfect, with a demonstration of our blind spots, and the frequent assumptions and shortcuts our brains take which result in misperceptions and optical illusions.

CaptainDisillusion is getting so good at debunking, he’s now tackling two lies in a single short video. The cup levitation trick is easier to do, but at least you know it’s a trick. The train track near miss video on the other hand leverages realism for views.

While we’ve seen all eight of the optical illusions featured in SciShow’s video before, what makes this clip most interesting is the how much you’ll learn about human vision and perception.

Carpenter Shop built came across an image of what appears to be an impossible object, and decided to see if he could reproduce it in his workshop. The finished build really will mess with your brain if you stare at it for too long, but it’s actually quite a simple visual trick.

Claire & Max’s short film envisions New York City as a giant movie set, its buildings replaced by thin facades of themselves with the help of some super trippy visual effects. Though we’re pretty sure we’ve seen this somewhere before.

We’ve all seen magicians perform some variant of the cheesy old rope trick, but we’ve never seen anyone do it quite as well as Vegas prestidigitator Mac King, whose timing, precise slight of hand, and stage presence all come together to elevate this classic gag.

Magician Mahdi Gilbert – who developed his own methods of doing tricks because he has deformed hands and feet – tries to fool Penn and Teller with his oil and water trick with the two masters watching right beside him.

There’s no such thing as “free energy.” That doesn’t make this clip any less puzzling. Somehow, the small weight on top causes the rear wheel to spin. Perhaps it has something to do with friction. A more cynical explanation: perhaps it was filmed on a tilting platform.

Artist Jordan Molina aka “TutoDraw” shows off how the effective use of a black background can create all sorts of creepy effects on his hand, from his wrist being severed to exposing the bones inside, or chunks bitten out of it.

The second place winner at the 2016 Illusion of the Year, Kokichi Sugihara’s Ambiguous Cylinders look like they’re either composed of cylinders or boxes depending on the side that’s facing you. The secret of the “hybrid squircle” design is surprisingly simple.

Arron Bevin shares this frustrating optical illusion. It doesn’t seem like there’s anything unusual about the image, but that’s the illusion itself. Once you figure it out, you won’t be able to unsee it. Clue: it’s all smoke, no mirrors. Give up? Here.

Captain Disillusion explains how animator Kevin Parry managed to pull off the seemingly seamless viral video of him playing catch with his reflection in the mirror. In a nutshell, it took multiple takes and painstaking video editing.

Glen Lewis-Steele’s made-to-order LED lamp looks like a cube that changes its shape as you move around it. In fact, it’s not even a cube, and the LED isn’t inside it. But perhaps its greatest illusion is that it doesn’t look like something that should cost as much as a laptop.

The sequel to the flawed but fun heist movie sees the team of illusionists blackmailed by their nemesis (Morgan Freeman) and a tech prodigy (Daniel Radcliffe) into pulling off an impossible heist.

Artist Chris Carlson takes to his chalkboard canvas once more – this time with a recreation of a classic video game. At first it doesn’t look that immersive, but look at the shadows around Chris’ and Ryu’s feet, and it seems as if he’s been dropped into the game.

The always charming Tim Rowett of Grand Illusions shows off a silly plaything he created that produces a very long (though not truly endless) stream of fabric-covered springs from a small container. We’d like a longer bazooka packed with 5x as many snake-springs.