We love a good optical illusion, and this one is a beauty.
Using a flashing color effect, you can swear the little characters in this image ride the moving stairs and leap off the top. But look closer. There’s almost no motion in the scene at all.
Created by Twitter user Jagarikin, the effect is called a reverse-phi illusion. Pretty neat, huh? Via MyModernMet:
The reverse-phi effect was first described in the 1970s. When a shape’s brightness flips between frames at the same time as it shifts position, the visual system reads the flicker as movement in the opposite direction, which is why these figures seem to travel without going anywhere. Jagarikin, a Japanese illusion designer, has posted dozens of these on Twitter and is worth following. For more ways to fool your eyes, see the photo of strawberries with no red pixels, Peeta’s optical illusion murals, and the spooky Halloween illusion.
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agreed, love it when your eyes can play tricks on you.
This was terrific!! I kept waiting for the “loop” but realized they never moved… so great!