Mighty Optical Illusions

Modern Reflection on Some Classic Optical Illusions

I have to admit that optical illusion submissions and stuff I find on the net, are simply coming in to fast for me to keep up to date with all of them. Seems I’ll have to do more and more compilation posts in the future that will be made from multiple illusions – I bet this sounds good to you, while it will probably take more time on my end. It would be awesome to find some pro bloggers to help me out, but I always seem to find awesome people that are willing to help, but don’t have that “perfectionist” touch I look for, or simply don’t have the needed experience with blogger platform. If some of you would like to help me out, and don’t lack needed qualities… – try and contact me for more info.

Concerning today’s post, I decided to make a little compilation with some new versions of old and classic optical illusions. These were made to look real-life, instead just plain graphics we use to see in some classic examples. You can browse this article to see new and old versions, including necessary descriptions. Enjoy!

P.S. I’d be more than happy, if you liked this post, and are willing to spread article’s link to websites like Digg and other sites you visit. Many thanks in forward!

Original “Elephant Illusion” was one of the first posts on this website, and originates all the way back to May 2006. This optical illusion is one of the most popular and oldest illusions that has been circulating the net. I saw it for the first time 10 years ago at my friend’s house, but am not sure who the original author for this one is.



This illusion was first posted by me back in the old days, more precisely March 2006 when this website was just starting to become popular. In my best knowledge the original scanned image falls in the public domain – the term used when there is no known author, or the image is freely used for every purpose. The original illusion was posted under the title “Instructions from Hell“. Later there were few more variations, where most popular proved to be “Lisa Simpson’s Impossible Object“.


As the user Red pointed out in one of his comments, this was done by a realist artist called Rob Onslaves. There are about 30 or so of his artworks somewhere on this site, and most of them are even more impressive than this one. This is an amazing painting of a bridge that turns into a line of boats to make an unusual image to see. I originally called it “Ships Optical Illusion“. There is a similar version made with camels as well called “Camels in The Night“.


The image you see on the left is the original drawing of the multiple meanings illusion “Is it Duck or a Rabbit“. I always favored this one from uncertain reason. I simply liked it. Hundreds of variations of this illusion can be found inside “Multiple Meanings” category. I’m not sure whats the name of the author who did the original, so I invite you to share your knowledge inside comments section.


This is truly an awesome optical illusion. You need somewhat great concentration not to see these image as a spiral, but correctly as set of concentric circles (concentric = they have the same center). Drawing you see on the left is one of the originals. Since this effect is very popular, there are already thousands of variations floating the net, many of which we covered in the past. You can check original “Spiral Illusion“, “Are there Circles or Spiral?” and many more inside multiple meanings category.

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