I love the minimalist simplicity. Somehow I think that this might be more compelling, however, if the top of the ladder ended in front of the guy. And I would ditch the question mark; you've already captured that confusion with your title. Fine tuning: Instead of flaring ladder-base shadow, have shadow match ramp lines. Going up ramp from bottom, top of left-side edge should meet the top edge of the right-turn ramp, and then the corner at the next turn should be straight up and down, not curved. Right-side edge of long center ramp should be straight up and down at the bottom, and at the top it should match the top of the left-turn ramp.

I already tried setting the ladder in front, but somehow it ruins some parts of the illusion. The question mark will be removed and I probably will not have time to edit the rest since I am working on multiple contests. Thanks for the suggestions though.

DanLundberg, if the top of the ladder ended in front of the guy, it wouldn't be quite an illusion then. If he/she fine tuned according to how you say, it would not be an illusion anymore--it would be realistic.

nice work ...............

k5683: If there were no guy, there would be no (really significant) illusion. The guy transforms the final ramp plane from a top to a bottom. My suggestion merely proposed that having the ladder connect to the front of that bottom (the direction the guy is facing) might be better than connecting to the back of that bottom -- plus (I would note) connecting to the front would create an illusion even without the guy (i.e., an alternative way to convert the final ramp plane from a top to a bottom).

great

good luck

very nice work, best of luck

very cool...gl