Following up on my previous post about visual illusions, reader Jake alerted me to this story from the BBC:
A design student made a battered old Skoda "disappear" by painting it to merge with the surrounding car park. Sara Watson, who is studying drawing at the University of Central Lancashire (Uclan), took three weeks to transform the car's appearance.
Note that like a trompe l'oeil painting in a building, or an anamorphic projection, the perspective work on the car will only allow it to "blend in" seamlessly when seen from a specific vantage point - which might be why we only have one photo in the BBC article! It would be interesting to see the back of the car to discover if the artist tried to make the illusion work from other angles as well.
Update: nice - a gallery with more views of the car. Also the original BBC story now has a video!
Humanities & Social Science
Comments
That's an idea I might have been too cynical to bother with, but the effect is actually intriguing. Especially where the shadow of the car doesn't disturb the illusion.
Posted by: Joe Leasure | May 3, 2009 4:18 PM
That's very clever. I can see a few places where it doesn't look quite right to me, especially along the left edge of the car. But overall it blends very nicely.
Posted by: John | May 3, 2009 4:24 PM
Wow. I hope she got major extra credit for that.
Posted by: Stephanie Z | May 3, 2009 4:35 PM
Aren't you supposed to _not_ stop on the yellow criss-cross areas?!! Although I guess if no one sees you, you can get away with it....
Posted by: Ian | May 4, 2009 7:53 AM
thats great!I love it
Posted by: opony | May 4, 2009 4:13 PM
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/5261764/Invisible-car.html?image=3
Shows a different angle
Posted by: Joe | May 5, 2009 1:24 AM
Very nicely done! This young woman has an excellent eye for this sort of thing. I truly hope she gets top marks for this project!
Posted by: Marci Hilliker | May 5, 2009 1:35 AM
Someone's going to come along and smash into that thing because they can't see it's there.
Posted by: Rhea | May 5, 2009 11:06 PM