Awesome Sculptures

Bonsai trees are typically living plants that require an immense amount of care and precision pruning. These talented artists show us how they make bonsais that require no watering – using thousands of strands of stiff metal wire to create their intricate designs. We wonder how long the process takes to do in real time.

Scott from Wonder World was fascinated by a video that showed how large metal spheres are made using explosive hydroforming. Here, he dives deeper into the process, along with other methods used for making spheres from steel, such as the shiny art pieces made by Shenzhen Maoping Sculpture Arts.

Dr. Willard Wigan MBE has an attention to detail most of us only dream of. He’s known for his infinitesimally small sculptures, which he carves using tiny tools under the lens of a microscope. WIRED’s Obsessed sat down with Willard to learn about his technique and the challenges of working at such a small scale.

After seeing the Mercedes Vision AVTR concept car in 2020, ND Woodworking was wowed by its curvaceous body and futuristic design. He then got to work, spending more than 100 days sculpting a scale replica of the car out of wood. The kid-sized version sits atop a metal frame with a working electric drivetrain.

LittleBall Creations makes beautiful marble mazes from bent and soldered copper wire. Here, they show off one of their self-contained mazes that sits inside of a cube. The marble rolls from one end of the track to the other when the cube is flipped over. If you’re interested in buying their work, contact them on Facebook.

Boys and girls of every age, wouldn’t you like to see something strange? North of the Border takes us to the town of Halloween with a little Nightmare Before Christmas goodness. His latest sculpture does a great job capturing the look of Ken Page’s villainous Oogie Boogie, complete with glow-in-the-dark abilities.

Artist Han Hsu-Tung creates wooden sculptures of organic forms caught in the middle of a digital glitch. He seamlessly melds smooth shapes with square ones to achieve a surreal effect in his human and animal subjects. Here’s a video showing how he makes one of his pieces… and it involves a chainsaw.

The sand castles we built when we were kids were basic structures in the shape of buckets. On the other hand, Leonardo Ugolini uses sand to make true works of art. In this time-lapse video by Ivents Kulturagentur, Ugolini built a sculpture of one of the sandworms from 2021’s Dune, using sand from the movie’s set.

Artist Reuben Margolin is known for creating amazing kinetic sculptures. He recently shared this video which compiles four of his mechanical artworks including dancing rings, a crawling creature, and rippling waves. All we could think of was Sonic the Hedgehog running through that one with the golden rings.

Having designed and worked on creatures in movies from Galaxy Quest to Avatar to Hellboy, artist Jordu Schell knows a thing or two about mask making. WIRED sat down with the professional artist for a glimpse into his creative process, starting from a concept sketch to creating a finished monster mask.

Artist and designer Dom Riccobene painstakingly replicated the full single-player map of Los Santos from Grand Theft Auto V as a 3D model. Because of the size of his 3D printer, he broke the map down into 24 quadrants, then assembled each piece onto a 20″ x 30″ base. We enjoyed watching the map legend being carved too.

Artist Steven Richter has wowed us with his sculptures before. This time he took on a different kind of challenge – replicating the rocket car from the end of Toy Story. He started by modifying existing toys, sculpting a new head for Woody, and building a model rocket. He then assembled it all into this crazy creation.

Pokémon will recognize this character as the Blastoise – a big turtle with powerful water cannons under its shell. 3D Sanago crafted this statue of the turtle and rigged it to shoot steam from its cannons instead of water. He used a stone to provide a curved template for drawing the body with a 3D printing pen. Turn subtitles on.

Adam from North of the Border takes a momentary break from making things creepier to bring us a different kind of sculpture. He built his Sharknado-inspired display piece by building a metal and silicone armature, then sculpting a bunch of sharks to embed in a light-up cotton funnel cloud.

Our brains can be easily tricked by optical illusions. StruckDuck shows off five different 3D-printed objects which seem to defy logic but are just messing with our minds thanks to the camera’s perspective. You can download STL files for all of these objects on StruckDuck’s Etsy shop.

Singapore’s XM Studios makes incredible collectible toys. Among them is this 1/4-scale Maestro, a super-smart and super-strong version of The Hulk from the future. The deluxe variant of the hand-painted polystone model features Maestro sitting on a throne made from a sentinel head, surrounded by the spoils of his conquests.

Pastry chef Amaury Guichon continues to wow us with his epic chocolate creations. For this build, he created a 3.5-foot-tall sculpture of a robotic arm out of 90 pounds of dark chocolate. Not only does it look awesome, its hinges move, and its gripper has mechanical gears.

This 1/10th-scale statue was inspired by the Spider-Man Pointing at Spider-Man meme. The 8.2″ tall scene features Spidey in his cartoon red and blue costume pointing his figure at whatever you want, along with a miniature shipping crate. You’ll need to buy two or more to replicate the meme, so that could get expensive.

If there’s one thing you don’t want staring you in the face when you turn the bathroom lights on, it’s a creepy Alien xenomorph spider taking a bath in your sink. JackJack brought that nightmarish vision to life with this creepy polymer clay and resin diorama. This is what happens when you don’t clean the sink, kids.

If you happen to drive through Sumpter, Wisconsin, you might come across this incredible work of art built in the 1980s by Tom Every. He created the enormous sculpture from more than 300 tons of scrap metal. Its fantastical structures imagined the launch of its creator into the heavens on a beam of lightning.

Because his creepy bowl of fruit didn’t have enough pointy teeth, North of the Border is back with another terrifying sculpture. This time, he imagined what Sulley and Mike from Monsters, Inc. might have looked like if they were really scary and not just cute and cuddly. Applying all of that blue fur to Sulley looked like a major pain.

Making drones out of lightweight materials is a must if you want them to fly. But Motores Patelo went the opposite direction, and created a flightless drone out of metal. Sadly, he couldn’t record the whole build due to the lockdown, but the finished piece is still amazing… and could easily take off a finger.

The scorpions we encounter here in the U.S. are relatively small, but this oversize metal creature measures 8.25″ long. This awesomely creepy creation is made by Thailand artists Kreatworks using recycled automotive and machine parts. Also, it turns out that there are real scorpions that are almost the same size in South Africa.