Hello world! Finally, I have stuff ready to post from my comic. I’ve been inspired by optical illusions and ambiguous images, and I’m trying to figure out how to create pairs of images that combine in an unexpected way when you turn the vellum page on top of the other page.
Imagine that this is a spread in a comic, with the verso page printed on ordinary paper, and the recto page printed on vellum:
And when you turn the page, voila!
A few things I’m trying to work out: How can I make the combined image as surprising as possible? Also, in the case of the above spread, just what the hell is that thing between the trees on the left? (I thought about making it the top a tree stump on the near side of the street, but decided it detracted from the two-plant theme.) Feedback would be very welcome.
Multi-Orbital Thought Balloon 
This is such a cool idea. One thing you could do to make the combined image more surprising is to use the negative space to create a new shape as well.
One thing you might want to look at is the Mad Magazine Fold ins. Not exactly the same idea but similar.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/03/28/arts/20080330_FOLD_IN_FEATURE.html
Wow, thanks for the link! I played with Mad fold-ins when I was a kid, but I’d forgotten about them until now. Maybe I’ll be able to indirectly absorb some of their genius.
I feel like an idiot, saying you should use negative space when I didn’t even SEE the people in the negative space!
Now that I can see them, it’s all I can see and it works really well. I think it’s hard for people to notice at first since we’re all so used to looking at the objects and not the space around them.
I -did- find it to be rather confusing advice… now the question is, how can I prime people to know that they should be looking closely for that sort of thing, as opposed to just skipping over it?
I’m not totally sure what would work. Maybe in the comic if you make the first one really obvious it’ll be easier to see the next ones since we’ll be looking for it?