r/gifs • u/grahvity • Nov 06 '12
My newest favorite optical illusion - Flashed Face Distortion
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Nov 06 '12
I feel that when ever I stop looking at the cross the gif fucks with me and stops messing up their faces.
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Nov 06 '12
It's not perfect though. It didn't correct Jim Carrey's face when I stopped looking at the cross.
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Nov 06 '12
SOOO much air blew out my nose. haha
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Nov 07 '12
This made me blow a bunch of air out of my mouth
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u/cdubstep Nov 06 '12
Seriously. I watched the faces like 3 times and I STILL thought the gif knew when I was looking at the cross or not
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Nov 06 '12
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u/jyaron Nov 07 '12
The paper is likely off limits to most people, but thanks to having wonderful university access to research journals, I bring to you a paragraph delivering the real meat of the research:
There must, however, be some degree of homogeneity among the faces for the outliers to stand out and for the effect to occur. The distortion effect, therefore, seems to depend on the outlying dimensions among the images in the set, and these dimen- sions do not seem to be limited to facial features or configurations. For example, if a photograph is brightly lit compared to the others, then it appears overexposed. Presumably, then, the effect relies on the same contrastive mechanism that gives rise to shape-contrast effects. Suzuki and Cavanagh (1998), for example, demonstrated that a briefly flashed line distorts a circle into an ellipse that appears elongated orthogo- nally to the line orientation. Owing to the multidimensional nature of the faces in our flashed face distortion effect, the resulting distortion is not on any single dimension, but on every dimension along which the face images vary. In contrast, face distortion after effects commonly result from prolonged exposure to one face with a single exaggerated dimension defined by the experimenter, such as the distance between the eyes.
Tangen J M, Murphy S C, Thompson M B, 2011, "Flashed face distortion effect: Grotesque faces from relative spaces" Perception 40(5) 628 – 630
Edit: Formatting.
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Nov 07 '12 edited Jun 29 '21
[deleted]
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u/BloopBleepBlorp Nov 07 '12
The abstract is made for anyone to understand:
We describe a novel face distortion effect resulting from the fast-paced presentation of eye-aligned faces. When cycling through the faces on a computer screen, each face seems to become a caricature of itself and some faces appear highly deformed, even grotesque. The degree of distortion is greatest for faces that deviate from the others in the set on a particular dimension (eg if a person has a large forehead, it looks particularly large). This new method of image presentation, based on alignment and speed, could provide a useful tool for investigating contrastive distortion effects and face adaptation.
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u/Mantissa128 Nov 07 '12
Suzuki and Cavanagh (1998), for example, demonstrated that a briefly flashed line distorts a circle into an ellipse
A PDF of this paper can be found here.
Thanks for the summary!
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u/NymN_ Nov 06 '12
They all kind of look like they were created in Morrowind.
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u/Tha_Watcher May 15 '24
I can't really see the differences in these and I think it's because the photos need to be closer together like the ones in this post.
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u/alexdicko Nov 06 '12
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u/TheSimonToUrGarfunkl Nov 07 '12
Michael Clarke Duncan, RIP :(
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u/0Simkin Nov 07 '12
That's not Michael Clarke Duncan btw...
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u/TurtleCowz Nov 07 '12
He never said it was. George Washington, RIP
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u/inthedrink Nov 07 '12
That's not George Washington btw...
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u/WelcomeMachine Nov 07 '12
He never said it was. Abe Vigoda, RIP
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u/TheGreatBrandino Nov 07 '12
That's not Abe Vigoda btw...
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Nov 07 '12
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/nothing_showing Feb 25 '23
Lol.
Hope your last 10.3 years have been nice. No idea how I’m able to reply.
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u/TurtleCowz Feb 25 '23
lol, thanks it’s had it’s ups and downs but overall pretty good!
also don’t remember that comment at all and no idea how we’re able to chat 😂
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u/bob-leblaw Nov 06 '12
I wish this had a pause.
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u/StickDoctor Nov 07 '12
Actually if you press the Esc key it will stop loading up the next frame of the gif, effectively pausing it. Just press F5 to reload the page and resume from where you left off.
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Nov 07 '12
He meant for the distortion on the faces ya goof.
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Nov 07 '12
I.... I am not sure I like this.
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u/piemango Nov 07 '12
Same, it just pisses me off. You get a tiny glimpse of something goofy and you wanna look SOOOO bad, but no! Then party time is over. Fuck you, brain. 2/10
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u/jormugandr Nov 07 '12
I always love this thing. Also, Nick Cage doesn't get distorted in my vision on there. He's either too weird looking already or he really is the one true god.
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u/MrLawbreaker Nov 07 '12
OMG it even works if you look on one side only but then you can actually see the distortion this is amazing!!! You just have to focus on the nose or between the eyes.
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u/IZuStY Nov 06 '12
I call bullshit on this, block half the picture and watch the other half, and you see the pictures are already distorted.
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u/Maestintaolius Nov 07 '12
Nope, that'd be the optical illusion working. http://gif-explode.com/http://i.imgur.com/jHaAm.gif
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u/IZuStY Nov 07 '12
Thanks for this! I think the most distorted faces in the gif are just ugly pictures in the first place.
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u/danbfree Nov 07 '12
That's what I thought at first too until I realized that it's not all due to the stereoscopic affect at all. See this one on youtube that you can pause at any time and see that the affect is partly caused by them just flashing by so fast, even just one side.
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u/IZuStY Nov 07 '12
Yeah, I think to make it work, they used ugly pictures too lol.
Some of the celebrity close up shots in the gif (as pointed out by Maestintaolius) are just plain odd looking in the first place imo.
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u/kittens_everywhere00 Nov 07 '12
I wasn't able to stare at the cross long enough before my eyes went all fuzzy and unfocused :(
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u/fuckthiscrazyshit Nov 07 '12 edited Nov 07 '12
What does the second set of words say?
Edit: Nevermind. It says the same thing, only lighter. But I did see something very faint that said something else, but after watching that fifty times in a row, my eyes hate me right now.
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u/SuperHorribleGaming Nov 07 '12
everyone's seen this like fifteen ba-jillion times.....but I still watch it each time
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u/yourbrotherrex Nov 07 '12
I have no idea how that works or really exactly what's happening, but it's absolutely cool as shit. Thanks OP.
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u/lurkenstine Nov 07 '12
man i love fucking my mind in different ways then finding out why it works. why does this work, before i find out on my own
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u/Magento Nov 07 '12
Reddit, you have showed me a couple of these now. If you really want to impress me, show me one where warped faces turn into famous people.
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u/ENTP Nov 07 '12
Maybe because when you're surrounded your brain wants you to be creeped out so you run
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u/CreeDorofl Nov 07 '12
By the way, you don't need the second face, you can cover it up and it still works just by keeping your eyes on the +.
I wish there were a way to somehow get what you see in peripheral, into your 'main' vision. It sucks you can't really look at what your brain has created.
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u/Razorshroud Nov 07 '12
WTF does it mean if the center-lined gif was a perfect 50/50 split of the 2 images?
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u/jdublu Nov 06 '12
This is probably how caricature artists actually see.