Used chalk to draw up a perfect illusion

https://youtube.com/shorts/kVlxIFrOonc?si=JY3xBf84IPjiDW_S

This is a video of a young guy who in my opinion has gained some mastery in art to be able pull this off. Before we even look at the illusion, talk about drawing a circle with your hand and entire body. It's not a perfect circle but it's pretty darn close.

Whether it was his own ability to balance his entire body or a trick he learned, that was very cool.

But there's actually a real reason why it was possible. When someone draws a circle using their whole arm and body, not just the wrist, they’re using larger muscle groups and smoother motion patterns so getting a more accurate circle is possible. In other words it's easier than it looks.

I'm just capping, it's not that easy, I've tried it.

He drew two brick wells and a small ladder connecting the two and did it in a way that actually looked 3d. The way he walked on it like crossing a tiny bridge made it look even more real.

For the drawing, it's called anamorphic perspective. The artist deliberately distorts the drawing so that from one specific viewpoint, all the warped lines line up and what happens next is that your brain interprets them as correct depth cues.

Your brain is doing most of the work. Your visual system assumes the parallel lines converge is actually depth. It assumes the size changes is distance.

The drawing only exploits those assumptions. From the wrong angle, it looks stretched and broken but from the right angle, the illusion works. The keyword here is perspective.

When he walked across the made up bridge, his feet aligned with the illusion making it even more real to the human eye, once again from the right angle.

It's actually very risky to do this in the middle of a road. If a car approaches and the driver is deceived to think it's real and tries to avoid falling, we could be looking at an accident. I'm sure he cleaned that up right after the video.