Optical illusion. The shelves are straight and hence the pictures are level. Their horizontal placement makes the whole thing look crooked.
“The café wall illusion (also known as the Münsterberg illusion or the kindergarten illusion) is a geometrical-optical illusion in which the parallel straight dividing lines between staggered rows with alternating dark and light rectangles (such as bricks or tiles) appear to be sloped, not parallel as they really are.”
Sure, but the lines in the comic aren’t actually straight.
@zbicyclist: this should work on most browsers: click and drag the image, it should give you a translucent version of the comic as you drag; drag each line till it alines with the outside border of the underlying comic. Do this, and confirm each line as actually straight. I just did this, and each line is straight.
Good link narmitaj. In fact, if you compare the comic to the picture on Wikipedia, they are exactly the same. The artist just added pictures in the black boxes. But the line spacing, placement, and number of picture frames is exactly the same as the Wikipedia image.
I had to blow it up and print it out and then measure, but of course you are correct: it’s an optical illusion.
I took the image from the cartoon and the image from the Wikipedia article and overlaid one on the other in Photoshop and, as Wendy says, they’re fundamentally identical as you flip back and forth between the layers. The artist must have simply taken the Wikipic (or the same one from some other article) and colourised and embellished it.
Is it possible to place books or pictures on an actual bookshelf so as to achieve this?
Probably, but you have to make sure there’s plenty of contrast between the dark books/ pictures and the light background/ wall (or the other way round), as per the illustration in the Wikipedia link where the illusion doesn’t kick in with pale pastelly colours.
I wonder if it has to be a flat drawing for the effect to work. I’d think a real-world shelf’s 3 dimensions might mess with the illusion.
Comics I Don't Understand 
Optical illusion. The shelves are straight and hence the pictures are level. Their horizontal placement makes the whole thing look crooked.
“The café wall illusion (also known as the Münsterberg illusion or the kindergarten illusion) is a geometrical-optical illusion in which the parallel straight dividing lines between staggered rows with alternating dark and light rectangles (such as bricks or tiles) appear to be sloped, not parallel as they really are.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caf%C3%A9_wall_illusion
Sure, but the lines in the comic aren’t actually straight.
@zbicyclist: this should work on most browsers: click and drag the image, it should give you a translucent version of the comic as you drag; drag each line till it alines with the outside border of the underlying comic. Do this, and confirm each line as actually straight. I just did this, and each line is straight.
Good link narmitaj. In fact, if you compare the comic to the picture on Wikipedia, they are exactly the same. The artist just added pictures in the black boxes. But the line spacing, placement, and number of picture frames is exactly the same as the Wikipedia image.
I had to blow it up and print it out and then measure, but of course you are correct: it’s an optical illusion.
I took the image from the cartoon and the image from the Wikipedia article and overlaid one on the other in Photoshop and, as Wendy says, they’re fundamentally identical as you flip back and forth between the layers. The artist must have simply taken the Wikipic (or the same one from some other article) and colourised and embellished it.
Is it possible to place books or pictures on an actual bookshelf so as to achieve this?
Probably, but you have to make sure there’s plenty of contrast between the dark books/ pictures and the light background/ wall (or the other way round), as per the illustration in the Wikipedia link where the illusion doesn’t kick in with pale pastelly colours.
I wonder if it has to be a flat drawing for the effect to work. I’d think a real-world shelf’s 3 dimensions might mess with the illusion.