Awesome Illusions

Thus far, humans haven’t figured out how to control gravity. But it’s easy to achieve the illusion that we can manipulate its forces through the magic of photography. COOPH shares a handful of simple tricks which use rotation and props to help sell the illusion.

Placing a one-way mirror in front of a regular mirror can create an infinite reflection illusion. It’s typically used to make glitzy disco-style lighting, but in this video from Wiz’s Woodwork, he shows us how to use the effect to make it look like his coffee table leads down a very long mine shaft.

Inspired by the work of VILE/a>, Slovakian street artist DOKE took on a fun and difficult spray paint challenge. The goal? Create a photorealistic scene that makes it look like holes are cut through a wall so you can see the building, grass, and trees behind it. Of course, the illusion requires the light and viewing angle to be just right.

Artists often like to paint what they’re looking at, but this one takes things to another level. Döuyin contributor tcmss1.0 looked out beyond their tiny, tilted canvas and painted precisely what they saw – preserving the perspective and making the painting gradually disappear into the background.

Our brains can be easily tricked by optical illusions. StruckDuck shows off five different 3D-printed objects which seem to defy logic but are just messing with our minds thanks to the camera’s perspective. You can download STL files for all of these objects on StruckDuck’s Etsy shop.

Artist Leandro Erlich is known for large-scale installations incorporating optical illusions. This simple yet effective illusion combines an image of a building with mirrors at a 45º angle, turning visitors on the floor into wall-climbing Spider-People. It’s on display at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston through 9.15.22.

We’re fascinated by the variety of machines you find in factories. This particular device is fairly simple – a couple of rollers and a spinning blade. But it’s the stroboscopic optical illusion that occurs when it spins up to speed that makes it so satisfying to watch. Somebody needs to turn this into an endless loop.

At first glance, it looks like the ball in this video from StruckDuck is defying gravity and rolling up a slide. The trick involves a specially-distorted 3D print and a camera placed in exactly the right spot to pull off the illusion. You can buy the STL template file for the slide on Etsy.

If there is a higher power controlling things on Earth, we like to imagine they reach down with their giant hands to move things around while we’re not looking. Filmmaker Erik Schmitt’s forced perspective illusion of a hand moving cars on a ferry is pretty much what we’ve envisioned. His TikTok channel has lots more visual tomfoolery.

Drawing in perspective allows artists to create 2D images with the illusion of depth. Rob of BK Architecture shows us how you can easily create 2-point perspective by drawing along an elastic cord strung between two push pins manipulated by a paperclip. A single pushpin can be used to draw a fisheye perspective.

Esther Aular aka NEKI is an incredibly talented makeup artist, specializing in optical illusions. She creates her alter-egos with a mix of face paint and prosthetics. See if you can guess where her real eyes are hiding on each of the faces in this compilation video, and check out more of her surreal creations on TikTok.

When you place a marble at the bottom of a ramp it shouldn’t roll uphill, right? Well in this tricky video from Things Made of Cardboard, they made it look like it’s possible. See if you can figure out how they did it before the end of the video.

Videos and film images aren’t moving at all. They’re just a collection of back-to-back frames that our brains stitch together to create the illusion of movement. Joe Hanson of the PBS series Be Smart takes a deep dive into the way that our eyes and minds process images and how motion picture devices work.

Bring a colorful splash of light into any space with this trippy tabletop lamp. It uses a combination of reflective acrylic, dichroic filters, and an LED light source to create the illusion of multiple cubes inside. Measures 8.6″ L x 8.6″ W x 9.4″ H.

This clever TikTok video uses simple visual effects and editing to create some mind-bending transitions. By changing outfits and posing himself in precisely the correct positions between cuts, it looks like its subject is seamlessly moving between the digital world and the real world.

Matt Pritchard’s trick chess set took home first prize in the 2021 Best Illusion of the Year Contest. Using a mirror and an anamorphic camouflage shield, the moving white queen only appears in the mirrored image. Gizmodo compiled more of the year’s best illusions here.

Mathematician Yosuke Ikeda created this tricky machine which uses a mirror to make it appear that there is one more marble on its turntable than there really is. Except when the mirror is moved out of the way, another marble really is there.

Sleight of hand is a critical skill when it comes to close-up magic and card tricks. In this video, expert magician Daniel Roy walks us through a series of progressively more impressive card control examples. We could have sworn he was shuffling those cards when he wasn’t.

Engineer Matt Ferraro came up with an innovative method to hide images in clear acrylic. At first glance, the tile appears to be completely transparent, but when light passes through it onto a surface, an image is revealed. The technique relies on caustic patterns which cast shadows and transmit light at varying intensities.

Using a professional full-color 3D printer and taking advantage of the stairstepped surfaces of voxels, Make Anything was able to create a sweet model of a human skull that appears to change colors when viewed from different angles. Download the model here.

Created by ShaneF Motion Design, this incredible CGI rendering replaces the windows at the Zara SoHo NYC store with visuals that create the illusion that the store has been flooded with some kind of alien swarm. We’d love to see this done in real life using transparent LED screens.

While Mark Rober has shown us some amusing ways to annoy porch pirates, they don’t prevent them from stealing packages in the first place. Jason at Impossible Science came up with a clever way to fool them into thinking there’s no package there at all – using angled mirrors to cloak deliveries from being seen from the street.

This unique metal yo-yo features a lightweight CNC-machined frame that makes it look like its parts are floating. Its offset connector bars enable the optical illusion as it spins up to speed. It’s available in bead-blasted aluminum, black anodized aluminum, and titanium and includes a sleek metal desk stand.