I Reject Your Objective Reality
March 30, 2009 23 Comments
If you are a fan of optical illusions, you may already be familiar with the Hollow-Face paradigm in which a concave mask of a face is perceived as a normal convex face. A popular example of this is the “Gathering For Gardner” dragon, a puzzling papercraft that tricks your eye into thinking the dragon’s head is following your every movement. Watch the stalkerish effect in action and then check out the Halo version FragdaddyXXL so cleverly recreated in Forge mode. It took me about 30 seconds to see the illusion in this video but once my brain grasped what I was seeing, it was really quite remarkable. To maximize your enjoyment of this phenomenon, watch the dragon video first so you understand what you are supposed to be seeing. Viewing both videos will only take up two minutes of your time so quit reading and start watching already. Seriously, I’m not going to say anything interesting from here on out anyways. I could use this time to answer Shirdel’s completely off-topic and irrelevant bisexual inquiry but nobody is reading at this point so I won’t bother.
*Thank you to Miguel Chavez, who claims to be able to do to the same illusion with one of his more massive body parts, for the tip!
“who claims to be able to do to the same illusion with one of his more massive body parts”
I hope you aren’t thinking about what I think you are thinking about. Are you?
I have no idea what you are talking about. ::smiles innocently::
I think I’m thinking about something which is to be thought about by the thinker of thinking… wait wut?!
Here I am struggling to find the time for my dusty old Xbox nowadays while these crazy kids are out there doing all manner of cool and pointless things with their time :( ho hum…
I didn’t even know you had the ability to be innocent
=P
I don’t. I was lying. :)
I’d reply at length, but my fingers are busy.
Maybe I just suck (hurr hurr), but I’m having a hard time seeing the same effect in the Halo version. I had it for a second, and I was like “OOOOH that’s cool” but then it went away. T.T
I’ve been gifted into being able to see both illusion as truth from the start with this little dragon.
While the dragon vid works perfectly, the Halo version just isn’t working for me. I think the problem is the perspective allowed by the woodgrain of the planks; it allows a reference point for our brains to base the severity of the concave off of, therefore ruining the 3D effect. For me, at least.
agreed… sigh, and i liked the little paper dragon so having a forge map with a giant one always staring at you from wherever you stand would have been a great set piece for a usable map
“come find me, im exactly where the dragon is staring”
Same here, the halo version of the illusion isn’t working for me.
Try harder!!
Terribly clever! I used to have a cutout of that illusion sitting on my desk. But it kinda freaked me out so I put it in a drawer. Maybe I should use active desktop to put that video on in the background looped forever! Fear the Stalker Dragon!
after watching the video twice, I finally see it. I noticed it better in the distance shot vs up close.
It’s nothing compared to Mr. Potato Head’s eyes in Family Game Night…. I feel like he’s staring into my soul *shiver*
“Halo 3 is an interactive computer game, which apparently became very popular among kids. There is also some kind of utility available, in my best knowledge called “Halo 3 Forge Sandbox”, that let’s you create your own levels and environment. ”
…
srsly?
wtf.
That person is obviously not well versed in console games; probably had to do a google search to get some background on the game or filtered what some friends said about the whole thing, so I’d cut him a little slack. But what makes it interesting to me is that our beloved Halo would actually *get* that far into the mainstream that it would loop back into a niche of something equally obscure as blogs about Optical Illusions.
Just feels cool to me, ’tis all.
Definitely, it’s an awesome crossover. I enjoy seeing the same thing, when it intersects with various crafts, confectionery endeavors, and things of that nature.
I watched the whole half of the vid not seeing it but at around 50 seconds it finally clicked. I rewatched it and it was really awesome.
THANKS ANGEL!
That’s the exact same thing that happened to me. I was watching it and saw nothing then suddenly POOF, there is was!
It’s funny how it just clicks all of a sudden!
i dont see it….i guess it doesnt work on real dragons.
i dont see it! illusion fail on my side.
it took me a few times (didnt realize that it was backwards from the one in the youtube video), but once i got it, it was pretty cool. i almost had to look past the geometry to see it.
very cool find, Angel.