Optical illusion shows 'witchcraft' as people struggle to spot Pokemon character

Whether you're testing your eyesight, or wanting to work out how intelligent you are, optical illusions are great and can also go viral for hilarious reasons. Now the latest brainteaser has left many people scratching their heads online.

Reddit users were left utterly confused after some "witchcraft" was shared on the u/opticalillusions forum recently. In the moving picture, it shows a Pokemon character hidden in the colourful pattern which resembles a flame. And the iconic video game character in the photo is actually the dragon. The caption in the Reddit post read: "When you pause the video Charizard disappears."

At first glance, you probably won't realise there's anything in the image, until you really focus on things.

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Since it was shared, it garnered hundreds of likes and dozens of comments. One joked: "Yep. I have never been able to see a magic eye image. This is basically witchcraft to me."

Another added: "Doing God's work here, for sure. I've never seen anything like this and it's fantastic."

A third commented: "Thank you. This is the first magic eye I have ever been able to make out. Because of your video I knew what to look for."

The moving picture is a great example of the Magic Eye optical illusion which works by manipulating a repeating pattern to control the perceived depth and hide a 3D image in a 2D pattern.

It was developed in 1991 by engineer Tom Baccei, as well as 3D artist Cheri Smith and programmer Bob Salitsy.

Many people might agree the concept is rather mind-boggling and to see one for yourself, you can hold the centre of a painting image right up to your nose.

In one case, it should be blurry but you can focus as though you're looking through the image into the distance. Then very slowly move the image away from your face until, for example, the two squares above the image turn into three squares.

Magic Eye pictures are a form of autostereograms which create the illusion in the first place.