Bamboozle your mind with illusions

Gianni Sarcone
Bamboozle your mind with Super Optical Illusions – my book of brain boggling artworks is a clever gift for curious-minded children. Find hearts that beat in the middle of the page and snail shells that spiral off into infinity. Enjoy a preview of my eye popping illustrations below and look for many more in Super Optical Illusions – available now!

As an author, designer, and researcher in the field of visual perception and creative thinking, I like to combine art, psychology, cognitive sciences, and recreational logic to test people’s ingenuity.

I have created or adapted most of the illusions contained in my books. Many were created and perfected during my workshops which are held for the benefit of children and adults alike (more information at: http://www.archimedes-lab.org/prospatelier.html).

Try to solve the optical illusion puzzles below without looking at the answers.

The Football

The Football

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The Bullephant, an earliest bistable figure

Gianni Sarcone

Visual illusions where you experience two equally possible interchangeable states in perception are called “bistable illusions“. The Necker cube and the Rubin vase are ones of the most classic examples of a bistable figure. I have discovered that all over India, you may see many variants of an interesting bistable depiction, which represents a bull and an elephant with distinct bodies and only one head (painted or sculpted at least 850 years ago). If you look carefully at the whole picture, you may see how the body parts of both animals are skillfully overlapped. For instance, the trunk of the elephant is also the hump of the bull. The horns and ears of the bull have become the mouth or snout of the elephant. These are ones of the earliest documented “ambiguous figure” illusions…

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How To Draw Incredible Illusions, a cook-book for artists and designers

Gianni Sarcone

After the success of my book “Drawing Optical Illusions“, I was commissioned by Imagine Publishing for a new tutorial book project titled “How To Draw Incredible Optical Illusions” [You can get this book from Amazon US  and Amazon UK]

My book dissects the most fascinating and confounding black and white optical illusions, patterns and tiling, explaining in a concise fashion how they work, how to design and create them, and how to personalize and play with them to your heart’s content. With accessible yet fascinating text and workable samples, this intriguing art ‘cookbook’ is appropriate for graphic designers, teachers, artists, art lovers and the curious who enjoys contemplating how the mind works and how the eye sees. Continue Reading →

Super Optical Illusions

Gianni Sarcone
The outside world is mediated through our sense organs, so what we perceive and feel are just representations of reality. The only things we cannot doubt are our inner emotions: we cannot doubt that we are happy, sad, in love, or in grief, when such states apply. The only other thing we cannot doubt is… to doubt!

Super Optical Illusions (aka Xtreme Illusions 2) is a children book project I enjoyed to make three years ago for the publishers “Carlton Books” [amazon.co.uk], “National Geographic Kids” [amazon.com] and “Ça m’intéresse” [amazon.fr]. It looks really fantastic and my pictures are large to enjoy the details! It is a family book that will encourage the young reader to explore the mysteries that lie right inside our own minds (including the key scientific concepts of perspective and perception).

Super Optical Illusion

Book Cover

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You Can’t Possibly Color This!

Gianni Sarcone
You_cant_possibly_color

An Impossible Optical Illusion Activity Book

No mere coloring book, You Can’t Possibly Color This! is an eye-spinning experience that will inspire and astound. That’s because you’ll be coloring in optical illusions — things that can only exist on the page. With a just a few tips, you’ll be coloring in things that will bulge, expand, and even rotate. Other objects will leave you confused as you try to figure out the “trick,” while mandalas, complex patterns, and labyrinths will mesmerize you. Also included are fun activities for drawing and creating your own optical illusions.

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Reuleaux-triangle intermittent mechanisms

Gianni Sarcone

The Reuleaux triangle is a curious geometric shape: it looks like a rounded triangle, yet it has a remarkable property. Each side is an arc drawn from the opposite vertex, and together these arcs form a curve of constant width. In other words, no matter how you measure it—between two parallel lines—the width always remains the same.

Because of this property, a curve of constant width can act as a rotor inside a square. As it turns, the shape remains in contact with all four sides of the square at every moment, tracing a continuous motion while never leaving the boundary.

Mechanisms based on intermittent motion appeared early in mechanical engineering. One of their first practical uses was in sewing machines, where motion had to advance in precise steps rather than continuously. Today similar mechanisms are widely used in devices that move film frame by frame—such as cameras, projectors, and film-processing equipment—where controlled, stop-and-go motion is essential.

Reuleaux mechanism
Reuleaux mechanism 2