Do you notice anything peculiar about this chameleon standing on a green branch?  Would you believe that it is actually not a chameleon at all?  Would you believe that it is made of two painted women?  Take a look at the image a bit closer and you can figure out exactly how this extraordinary body painting was done.

Watching the animation of the chameleon walking below, you can begin to see how the two women are configured and painted to resemble the lizard.

Johannes Stoetter and his assistant (Saphira) spent about four hours planning this project and then another six hours actually painting the two women featured.

(via Johannes Stoetter)

At first glance, it kind of looks like this girl has a wild head of green hair, doesn’t it?

To see additional photographs that use strange angles and a bit of ruse, please be sure to check out the Grabbing the Tower Optical Illusion and the Strange Looking Kid Optical Illusion.

(via Koldunov Brothers)

Take a quick look at this cat on a stairway.  Do you think that the cat is climbing up the stairs and heading down the stairs?  Depending on how you look at it, you can probably perceive either to be true.  Maybe there are some clues on the photograph that could help you draw your own conclusion.

I have my opinion, but I do not know what the correct answer is.  What do you think?  Is the cat heading up the stairs or down the stairs?

To see another ambiguous cat, have a look at the cat and mouse optical illusion.

The circle in the center of this wavy yellow and purple pattern appears to move to the right while the background appears to moving to the left.  The motion effect on this one is incredibly strong for me.  I don’t know if it is the colors, or what, but it certainly seems like an animation to me.  It just seems like it is constantly moving.

A couple of other great motion illusions from Professor Kitaoka are Moving Mona Lisa Face and Rotating Grapes.

(via Akiyoshi Kitaoka)

When I started this blog a few years ago, I was in need of some sort of header, or masthead, for the site design.  At the time, I was working on a project with a talented t-shirt designer from Malaysia and asked him if he could come up with anything for me.  Thankfully, he did!  His name is Flying Mouse (aka Chow Hon Lam) and I have posted many of his graphical creations on An Optical Illusion in the past.  Below is one of his more popular (and one of my personal favorite) designs titled Milking Out.

This design is available on a t-shirt for men or women in any size… if you’d like to own one for yourself, feel free to click here.  You can also browse t-shirts featuring his other clever designs by visiting his homepage here.  All of the shirts are printed on American Apparel 2011 Fine Jersey Short Sleeve shirts, which are made in the USA.  The American Apparel t-shirt is the smoothest and softest t-shirt you’ll ever wear.

I always love getting submissions directly from artists that I am not familiar with.  I was fortunate enough to receive an email from Laurent Blachier a few days ago pointing me to some of his topsy-turvy animated gifs.  Laurent is an illustrator, digital collage artist, and caricaturist, among other things.  Below is an animated gif of one of his creations featuring a sorcerer one way and a bad witch when turned upside-down.

I personally have always liked these types of illusions.  If you’d like to see some other great ones, be sure to check out the work of Rex Whistler and Peter Newell.  These guys were creating similar types of drawings back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

(via Laurent Blachier)

This is an older photograph, taken in 2007, but I had not seen it before.  Using some red, white, and blue paint, Liu Bolin camouflages himself in front of the stars and stripes.  The official title of this work is Hiding in the City No. 62 – American National Flag.

Liu Bolin has painted his body to match several interesting backgrounds.  Another interesting one is when he camouflaged himself in front of a rack full of guns.

(via Klein Sun Gallery)