Optical illusions that work small?

March 18, 2010 2:21 PM

Are there any optical illusions that give the illusion of motion / general tripy-ness on a computer monitor at 32x32 pixels?

Help me make my coworkers' eyes sore! I want an ichat icon (32x32 px) that is an optical illusion like this or this or even this. Unfortunately I can't find anything that works that small. Any experts out there?

posted by nathancaswell to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

Here's a page of icons sorta like what you want. The quality of the optical illusion will never be very good at that resolution though.

Sorta Move-y Icons
posted by Babblesort at 2:26 PM on March 18, 2010

Don't know about that 32x32 pixels, but I've always loved this page. The "Autumn color Swamp" is fantastic
posted by luvmywife at 2:27 PM on March 18, 2010

MIT's HAKMEM (pdf) has examples of interesting low-res art. See page 72, Item 145 and onward.
posted by zippy at 2:46 PM on March 18, 2010

I think most of those motion illusions work through the movement of the eye over the image - if you hold your gaze on a specific point in the image they stop moving.

So to a certain extent it's not the resolution that matters, but whether it's large enough that you can't take in the whole thing at once and have to scan around in it .
posted by aubilenon at 8:13 PM on March 18, 2010