Three-dimensional GIF?

[billroper]

This is behind a cut tag, because I don't feel like posting even a neutered ad into the middle of everyone's friends list. However, if you click on the cut tag, you'll see an advertising GIF that I found while browsing around tonight where the logo in the bottom right corner clearly appears to be in 3D -- at least to me! -- as I look at it on my LCD monitors.



Any idea how this works? As I move my head, the green "To" clearly shifts position relative to the other letters.

Or maybe I just need sleep.

Comments

[jrittenhouse.livejournal.com]

Contrasting Colors.

[poltr1]

The way the letters overlap, it looks like it could be 3D.

But it's not, at least on my monitor.

I think it's a hallucination, brought on by not enough sleep and too much conning and driving. :-) Try looking at it again after giving your eyes (and body) a rest.

[hrrunka]

There's a curious optical illusion I sometimes get when the subject is in primary colours. Certain colours tend to present themselves in front of others. Typically red comes forward while blue goes back. For me it's particularly pronounced against a black background, and that advert doesn't show the effect strongly for me.

Colors

[mia-mcdavid.livejournal.com]

This is a well-known phenomenon in landscape design. For an illusion of greater depth, plant cool colors in back and hot colors in front.

As far as the GIF, the green certainly pops against the red, but I don't see it move. I think Roper's just been having too much fun again.

[madfilkentist]

The illusion doesn't work for me. But then, those collections of dots that used to be popular, which were supposed to resolve into 3-D pictures when you unfocused your eyes, never worked for me either.

[unkbar.livejournal.com]

I tried it on both a Princeton 19" CRT and an Eizo 15 inch LCD. I see no such effect. I notice, however, that all of the colored letters in the bottom left of the image have drop shadows which are often used to suggest 3-D depth.

[alymid.livejournal.com]

It is a clever combination of icreasing letter sizes to create perspective, well chosen colors to enhance the effect, and some drop shadows to create shape depth. It doesn't look v. 3-d to me, but we use these tricks all the time creating logos and graphic art for projects at work.

[mdlbear]

It relies on the fact that your eye, being a singlet lens, has chromatic abberation: different wavelengths have different focal lengths. Your brain interprets this as a difference in depth. I get a tiny bit of apparent shift, especially if I'm not paying close attention. The effect might be stronger if the pink letters overlapped the green rather than the other way around.

[billroper]

That's interesting.

Actually, it turns out that I only see the effect when I'm wearing my glasses. My contact lenses are set to a slightly different focal length for each eye, so that one is better for distance, the other for close vision. And I no longer see the 3D effect with the contacts, nor do I see the 3D effect on the speedometer of my Ford Five Hundred except with my glasses.