The Construction of an Illusion
Although every illusion is different with its own special circumstances and problems, the starting point is almost always a geometrical construction.
In this case the steps have been constructed in classical twin vanishing point perspective. Because we are looking down on them the vertical parallels should converge to a third vanishing point off the bottom of the page. I have deliberately chosen to ignore this and have cheated the verticals to be parallel. Once the image has been ‘clothed’ photographically this will not be apparent except to a very keen trained eye. This kind of deliberate breaking of the rules lies at the heart of most illusions.
I have constructed this base image in 2D using vector software. It is not often that I use 3D software for illusions as it is difficult to persuade 3D software to create objects that do not truly exist in 3D space.
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