Do Your Head In

I was on the phone the other night taking down a request from client, who was being long winded, and as the conversation went on I started to doodle. I was using both pen and highlighter with clients so I started shading the doodle and it started to move before mu eyes.
What I have found doing this it is the colour combo that makes the illusion it is not really the shape. Try it your self by setting out a centre of rotation you can quickly copy with "ctrl + right Click" with just simple shapes and then getting the colour combo right. Maybe this should be posted in the challenge thread.

I love these things - I remember seeing them years ago in a DOS paint program, NeoPaint I think it was - not too sure.
I recal two very clearly as they really spun me out, one looked like rollers moving and the other was a star, I'll muck around and try to reproduce the star too. I think the trick was the colours as Albacour says, and also the spacing.. Not easy to work on, very trippy....

Phew this took a while to get right.... now I'm giddy!
I knew the effect was to make the star appear to be very slowly rotating, but it took a while too figure out the colours and right shape. Too pointy and the effect was lost, so it's rather more like gears than stars perhaps?
As I say, I recalled these from memory and have only reproduced them to the best of my memory. I think the illusion of movement has something to do with peripheral vision being more sensitive (more rods).
Rather like seeing a faint star at night out of the corner of your eye, but when you look directly at it, it disappears.

A variation on the rollers above.

Not many responses/comments to this thread so far? Maybe these images are sending viewers running for the nearest sink...?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Sledger

[....it's not an optical illusion, it just looks like one.]

---

Ah but it is an optical illusion :)
and some very good ones.

One explanation of why they 'move' http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/mot_rotsnake/index.html

Now that's a beauty Bill...!
Rather than a stress test, I find them hypnotic and calming.
(I have certain customers who 'stress my test' - :D )

I can imagine that created in Vinyl as a huge hanging banner..

Post #3 don't work for me, but the others are great.

Remi

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by remi

Post #3 don't work for me, but the others are great.

Remi

---

Yeh Remi with #3 I forgot to add that you need to be using 1920x1200 capable LCD monitor and Windows Vista..

I put a few of these in a zip for anyone who wants to check em out:)

Is this what the Xara Gallery is for?
I think not....

Sledger I tend to agree with you! If you want to move this to the Challenge Topics I would not mind as I don't have the permissions myself. Having said that I found it quite a nice exercise and fairly easy to do but it fried my eyes when working at 100% zoom. Nice examples you have posted and your stars worked for me.

post #3 dosn't really work for me - could be the monitor?

post #2 on the other hand is a beauty - sea sick already :D

nice work here - thanks both for the posting

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by sledger

Yeh Remi with #3 I forgot to add that you need to be using 1920x1200 capable LCD monitor and Windows Vista..

---

Nice try, Sledger. ;)

(btw: I have a 1920x1200 LCD monitor, but not Windows Vista.)

:) Remi

Sledger your post 3 does appear to move on my 5 year old Dell laptop at 1280 x 1024 resolution and Windows XP.

On my newer LCD monitors and Vista they do not move regardless of the resolutions I have tried.

Sorry Sledger, The stars don't move, but I'm with Bill only using 1280 x 1024 on windows XP.

The one that works best for me is Albacores original in Post #1.

But all in all, nice work and a nice effect. Thanks.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by remi

Nice try, Sledger. ;)

:) Remi

---

:) - stay alert...


-----------
There's probably a very good physiological reason why some see the illusion of movement and others don't. Of course colour blindness would be one biggie....

However a thought occurred to me, how many people wear glasses here?
I do as I'm long-sighted so close-up vision is impaired.
Perhaps those who don't see the movement in the stars have perfectly crisp vision close-up (or better glasses than mine:))?

So here's a blurred version of a single star which appears to me to move a tad faster (clockwise).

I think you guys are very clever and was amazed at your "animations"! Well done. The stars work for me, my resolution is 1024 x 768 but i wear glasses! Thanks for posting these, this was interesting.

Sorry Sledger, still can't see any movement.

Like Keith I do not see any movement. If I were you guys I'd lay off the wacky baccy LOL.

It's like they're all breathing and it's scaring me. :eek: If you move your eyes from one part of the pic to the other the illusion makes it seem like it's moving. Try moving your eyes from corner to corner. I get the strongest movement from the first image posted.

Looks like it´s rotating to the right--is that the effect we´re talking about?

Yes - the appearance of clockwise movement - which for me is quite strong - some others can't see any movement, which means nothing significant at all.