Illusion montage 2022 - magic, optical illusions, and science tricks created by Matt Pritchard

00:00 1 – An “impossible” fold. Inspired by a puzzle posed by Gianni Sarcone.
00:05 2 – An illusion for Harry. The name comes from both Harry Potter’s Platform 9 3/4s and Harry Houdini (who was famous for walking through brick walls during his magic shows).
00:13 3 – Fuzzy Logic. This is one of three different versions I made featuring the words true and false. See my social media account for the others.
00:20 4 – London Skyline made from drinks bottles and a mirror.
00:35 5 – Lateral thinking. Another variation of the Fuzzy Logic typography.
00:41 6 – Archimedes the elephant
00:54 7 – Skeletons in the closet
01:02 8 – Paper tumblers. Two views of the same set up. Original origami design by Seiryo Takekawa. I’ve made a simplified folding pattern here that can be printed off on A4 paper: https://www.sciencemagicshows.co.uk/p...
01:13 9 – Let it Snow. Six layers are combined to create the word. It was far more time consuming putting the small paper flakes onto the laminate sheets than I imagined.
01:25 10 – Pacman meets Kanizsa. During my childhood I was fascinated by negative space illusions. Particularly the Kanizsa triangle. This particular animation was sparked by one of Gianni Sarcone’s OpArt pieces.
01:44 11 – Hiding the elephant. Two inspirations for this piece. Firstly, Jim Steinmeyer’s excellent book that I recently reread and discover many new things between the lines now that I’ve spent a few years making my own micro illusions. Secondly, Jack Paton created the HIDE elephant optical illusion and we’ve been corresponding about turning it into a video.
02:10 12 – Bicycle animation. It might be hard to believe but the animation (as with most of my graphic design) was created on Powerpoint. I made a super wide object on a slide and slowly moved it across the screen. This was then exported as a video and downloaded to my phone to provide the backdrop for the cyclist.
02:23 13 – There is nothing to see here. Another animation inspired by negative space and typography.
02:35 14 – The Sisyphus machine. In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was cursed to constantly roll a boulder uphill. When it got to the top, it magically appeared back at the bottom. During my time conducted atomic physics research, one of the techniques we used to super cool the atoms was the Sisyphus effect and so the myth has a special meaning for me.
03:03 15 – Hindsight is an amazing thing. More playing with fuzzy logic typography.
03:14 16 – I made this video to combine the augmented reality of my Ghost Scope that is a handheld version of Prof Pepper’s famous illusion (more info in the Sparking Wonder ebook here: https://www.sciencemagicshows.co.uk/s... ) and some simple stop motion animation that I created.
03:46 – 17 Beating heart illusion. The gridlines appear to distort when the heart appears. It looks like the image comes alive. This effect (I think) is partly due to the Crater illusion (here’s a fun twist on it that was a collaboration with Akiyoshi Kitaoka https://www.instagram.com/p/CYCpIfOAZ... ) and the line colour merging with a similar coloured square.
03:55 – 18 Don’t cross the red line. An amazing teleportation using a LEGO figure.
04:16 – 19 Blackpool tower vanish. A little tip of the hat to David Copperfield who vanished the Statue of Liberty. The Blackpool tower was a ridiculous vanity project to try and rival Paris but situated in a northwest town in England. Blackpool happens to host the world’s largest magic convention and this illusion video was premiered there during my lecture.

Music credits... The majority of pieces used came from https://freesound.org/ which is a wonderful database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds. Illusion 11 features "Circus Tent - Netherworld Shanty" by Kevin MacLeod. CCA 4.0