Customer Reviews

Optical Designs in Motion with Moire Overlays (Dover Pictorial Archive)

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This is a collection of black-&-white op-art designs, arranged 3 per page, and supplied with smaller sized transparency repros of 4 of the designs. Positioning the transparency atop any of the printed designs and sliding it up, down, back, forth, or diagonally creates an animated visual psychedelic effect. For instance, one design which is replicated on the plastic film is an array of thin-line heliocentric circles. Superimposing the transparency of this same design atop itself produces the familiar moving "op-eyes" which can be controlled by distance of the overlay (from the center of the design), speed, and direction of movement.
If simple acetate reproductions are produced from the other designs in the book, and each is superimposed one-on-one with each other, 6,561 different combinations are possible! Even more if positioned two-on-one, but that may not be effective with all the designs.
Many times a thousand (or so) pictures are worth fewer words needing to be printed.

This is a great book, and I wish Dover would keep more like this in print. It's a great resource for op art designs, which are really handy for making psychedelic effects. The transparency sheet makes it fun to play with and see the moire effects, even if you don't scan the book to repurpose the art. Each page is split into 3 vertical strips with a different black and white pattern for each strip. There is no gray in this book, though there are some enlarged halftones, and some enlarged halftone gradients. Fun stuff. All in All, a useful book for designers, illustrators, artists, and I imagine, crafters.