Optical Toys

What: The Watercolor Illusion is one of those gorgeous ones where your brain is just… painting things that aren’t there.

What: The Ponzo Illusion is a gorgeous example of your brain being too clever for its own good.

What: The Zöllner Illusion (pronounced TSOLL-ner, or just “zollner” if you’re not feeling fancy) is one of those delightfully old illusions that still gets me every time.

What: The Titchener Circles illusion (also called the Ebbinghaus Illusion) is one of those classic brain betrayals that really gets you.

What: Okay you got me!

What: This optical illusion is an alternate example of the “Fraser spiral” or “concentric spiral” illusion.

What: This interactive version of the “stepping feet” optical illusion, where both the yellow and blue walkers appear to be stepping across the screen but are in fact moving in a straight line at the same speed.

What: The official name for this optical illusion, is Color Assimilation[1] or the Bezold Effect[2], which would be the most concise way of describing what is happening here.

What: This finnicky optical illusion is called schroders stairs, which is aptly named after it’s author, Heinrich Schröder, who published the illusion in 1858 [1] The illusion uitilizes a phenomena Multistable perception, which is a type of perceptual amb…

What: This optical illusion is a little tricky to categorize, but I’ll put it in the category of “contrast effect” [1], although in this example we’ve got an animated circle shifting from left to right, as opposed to two fixed objects.

What: The thatcher effect, as you may have just experienced in the interactive examples above, shows that when a face is upside down, but its features (eyes and mouth in this case) are themselves upside down, thus appearing right side up, the brain has a…

What: This illusion should hit fairly clearly, there is a checker board pattern, with a small diagonal set of checkers within each corner with an alternating pattern.

What: This optical effect is relatively simple to experience, as the cube flies through the space, it’s edges are changing any pixel behind them from black to white, and vice versa.

What: This illusion is an example of the reverse phi phenomenon, fooling your brain into seeing motion when there is very little, that is, colors are changing but the primary object is not.

What: This is the second optical toy on this site demonstrating this effect, although the other is using spirals they have a similar effect, albeit a little more spinny.

What: This is one of famous puzzle makers Sam Loyd’s vanishing puzzles, Sam Loyd [1] himself is one of the most historied and famous puzzle makers and has published hundreds of thousands of puzzles.

What: This isn’t the first time we’ve got some Akiyosi Kitaoka [1] on the site, and it won’t be the last.

What: This optical illusion (though im not entirely sure it falls into the illusion category) demonstrates an effect that occurs when you observe a moving pattern for a certain amount of time, and then begin looking at something else.

What: Bamboozled is one of my favorites, mostly because I stumbled upon it from this meme [1] and decided It must be a part of the Optical Toys collection.

What: This silhouette illusion is probably one of the harder to replicate, that being said, the effect and awe of getting it working is also probably one of the most amazing to me.

What: This effect, and honestly the largest body of work you’ll see when you look into both optical illusions and illusory motion has been created by Japanese artist Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a true master of the art.

What: The Healing Grid illusion is an optical illusion by Scientist Ryota Kanai, and was a finalist in the 2005 illusion of the year competition, with this peripheral trickery.

What: While I still feel that “dot’s that won’t quit” is a better name, this illusion is actually called the scintillating grid illusion which was discovered by Elke Lingelbach in 1994, although it also falls into the category of Hermann Grid Illusion [1]…

What: Some dots are here to stay, and others disappear, or at least that’s how it goes in this illusion, fantastically named an Extinction Illusion, named by its creator Jacques Ninio [1] … In this optical toy when you focus a single dot you’ll see (or not

What: The Troxler fade, named after the discoverer Ignaz Paul Vital Troxler [1], was documented in 1804 in his paper named “On the disappearance of given objects from our visual field” (that’s an English translation, it was in German).

What: The Ouchi illusion is an illusion named after its inventor, Japanese graphics artist Hajime Ouchi [1], in 1977, you’ll notice that the disc in the center appears to hover above the background, and when you’re moving your head it can appear to be mov…

What: Ok, this one is clearly not an optical illusion, but it’s a great optical effect that translates really well into the digital era, that said, if you get your hands on a physical one the tactile response is very fun!

What: This illusion, created by Alan Stubbs in 2006 [1], has the neat effect of a growing light (or shadow if you customize above to those colors) when you move your head towards and away from the image.

What: This one should hit you fairly quickly, but if it hasn’t yet, it’s that the lines are all horizontal here, but appear to your brain to have angles… the illusion has a couple of names, it was first named the Kindergarten pattern in 1898 [1] After a w…

What: The Lilac Chaser is perhaps my favorite illusion of all time, largely because it combines so many different illusions into one amazing piece.

What: The real name for this illusion is the intertwining illusion, which was documented by Dr.