Freezing Rotation Animation. (Animated #gif below may take a while to load, so please be patient until it full loads.)
If you observe the rotation of the central text label below, do you see it turning smoothly all the time? Does it seem to “freeze” from time to time? If you manage to cover or isolate the surround (swaying dots), you can easily see that the text is really turning continuously! One possible explanation of this phenomena states that “assuming a stable surround, our visual system probably uses the surround as a reference to measure motion of the included objects”. Spinning Girl Illusion Explanation. Spinning Girl Silhouette was an animated illusion that practically propelled our site to success few years ago.
It was back in the old days when Digg was still a major player. Anyway, the article still receives certain amount of attention and comments, but I noticed how many still struggle seeing the lady spinning in both directions. As you can recall it is possible to see the silhouette of this young dancer spin in both directions. Heck, some observers can even change the spinning-direction whenever they want. Running Spirals Illusion. Spinning MAN Optical Illusion. Warning: Might Cause Seizures. Rotational illusion. Rotating illusion "Rotating snakes" Circular snakes appear to rotate 'spontaneously'.
Copyright A.Kitaoka 2003 (September 2, 2003) Explanation (PDF file) "Candies"