Flying Gothic Bat

Gianni Sarcone

A new kinoptic design taken from my book “Extreme Illusions 2”.

Kinoptic designs are optical illusions where a static image appears to be moving due to the cognitive effects of interacting color contrasts and shape position. The essence of Kinoptic Art is actually to play with our optic nerves, to surprise and create the illusion of colors, dimensions or motion. Op Artist uses a palette of elements like blank spaces, XOR spaces, interspaces, interferences, space tiling and geometric patterns. Precision is also important in my creative processes: a small change in an Kinoptic Art picture can strongly modify or negate a visual effect.

The bat in the picture below seems to flutter, move and/or expand. Moreover, if you stare for a while at it and close your eyes, you will see a smaller white bat appearing to be painted on the insides of your closed eye lids.

bat illusion

You can see more samples of my kinetic optical art on Smithsonian Magazine.

How many digits of π are needed in real life?

Gianni Sarcone

If you had a circle the size of the observable universe, and you wanted to compute its circumference with an accuracy equal to the size of a proton, the number of digits of π that you would need is only 43. NASA scientists, for instance, keep the space station operational with only 15 or 16 significant digits of pi… That means that on a day-to-day basis, you can ignore far more of them!

How To Draw Incredible Optical Illusions

Gianni Sarcone

This is one of my favorite book projects commissioned by Imagine Publishing.
[You can get this book from Amazon US or Amazon UK]

This 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.

In the excerpt below I explain how to create a self-moving pattern. Continue Reading →