Awesome Sculpture

Adam from North of the Border made realistic versions of some Super Mario Bros. monsters, so it was only a matter of time before he got to Mario himself. His less-cartoony Mario imagines Nintendo’s plumber as a gritty, stubble-faced human with proportions based on the Norse god Thor. Instead of a hammer, Mario carries a pipe to take down his enemies.

How do you stop a bear from attacking? Take away his right to bear arms. Adam from North of the Border imagines a way to make a grizzly bear more deadly: by arming it with a high-capacity, rapid-fire weapon. After sculpting the bear’s body, head, feet, and hands, he imparted a fur texture before building a mini minigun and ammo pack.

Artist Steven Richter has made some very impressive sculptures over the years. He did something different for this piece by replicating Drew Struzan’s poster art for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as a three-dimensional sculpture. After casting the faces of the movie’s stars, he painstakingly replicated the painted light and shadow of the original image.

Back in 1976, they took red M&Ms off the market because red food dye was thought to cause cancer. While those M&Ms couldn’t really kill you, this one might. Adam from North of the Border imagined what it might be like if M&Ms ate people like people eat candy. It’s amazing how creepy you can make stuff by adding teeth.

JBV Creative has engineered all kinds of neat mechanical devices, including an overcomplicated candy dispenser and a robot that types. This time, he built a pair of machines that endlessly toss tiny basketballs into each other’s hoops. You can purchase a 3D printable model of the Roboballer on JBV’s website.

Willem Dafoe has played lots of baddies, but he’s never portrayed the Clown Prince of Crime, Joker. Crafty Art imagines what the sharp-featured actor might look like in the role with this impressive sculpture that took over 300 hours to create. After creating the clay bust, they cast a resin version for painting and detailing.

Modern cars are made from thousands of parts, precisely engineered to fit together and carry us safely down the road. Commissioned by Nissan China in 2012, Dutch artist Paul Veroude took a car’s 3,421 individual parts and suspended them from the ceiling relative to the locations where they are normally assembled.

To celebrate the release of God of War Ragnarök, artist Steven Richter created this impressive likeness of the game’s protagonist Kratos. He started by sculpting a clay bust, which he used to create a silicone mold. After filling the mold with resin and letting it set, he painted on all of the details and applied facial hair.

Artist WUZU clay made the cutest little sculpture of a Nintendo Game Boy / Game Boy Advance hybrid. They built the display inside a metal tin with an acrylic control section and working switches, then sculpted the game’s D-Pad, buttons, and characters out of polymer clay with magnets to hold them in place.

Adam from North of the Border likes to imagine that when Mario or Luigi get eaten by a piranha plant, their next life is a lab-grown clone of the original. So after sculpting some cloning tank versions of Nintendo’s iconic plumbers, he built them a mirrored chamber that appears to be an endless cloning laboratory.

Artist Greg Olijnyk makes incredible sculptures and dioramas out of cardboard, glue, and toothpicks (with a little help from coffee and whiskey.) Among his creations is David vs. G 2.0, a retelling of the David vs. Goliath story with a tiny cardboard samurai taking down a gigantic robot. His robot assembly line is fantastic too.

After Adam at North of the Border made his last blue-haired monster, many of us suggested that he use the leftover fur to make Cookie Monster. He obliged and sculpted Sesame Street’s #1 carb addict chomping on Shrek’s Gingerbread Man and his family. He didn’t bother using the fur because it was a pain in the ass.

Actor Tom Hanks and Woody from Toy Story are so indelibly intertwined in our minds that we didn’t notice anything wrong with this image at first. Zedabyu Creations sculpted a 3D model and used a 3D printer to create a custom Tom Hanks head with moving eyeballs, then attached it to a knock-off 1/6th-scale Woody figure.

Adam from North of the Border turns his attention from making creepy-looking cartoon characters to making creepy-looking food. Inspired by JackJack’s killer cheeseburger sculpt, Adam’s bowl is filled with toothy fruit that looks like it was harvested from the Upside Down.

With Anakin’s battle-scarred face peering through his cracked helmet, Darth Vader looked pretty damned terrifying in Star Wars: Rebels. Artist Steven Richter reworked one of his previous clay sculpts into Anakin’s head, then created a mold for a resin bust which he covered with a helmet he cast from a 3D-printed form.

After showing off his jaundice-skinned realistic LEGO minifigure, Adam from North of the Border is back with another disturbing sculpt. This time he took the blocky character Steve from MineCraft, and gave him humanoid features. This version looks like a swole, steroid-infused gym bro.

Not only did artist New Car come up with a design for an original concept car, but they also created a 3D sculpture of it using one of those filament pens that works like a free-form 3D printer. The most time-consuming part of the project was all of the sanding and smoothing.

Unexpected is an expert at building things out of popsicle sticks and glue. Unlike other constructions that still look like sticks, he manages to create objects that look more like carvings from a block of wood. Here, he show off a popsicle Ducati 899 Panigale, which is one of four wooden motorcycles he built.

Andrey Kazantsev of Dirt Customs makes amazing low-polygon-count metal animal sculptures. Watch as he welds together a wonderfully pointy Doberman sculpture from dozens of pieces of precision-cut metal. He ships internationally, and his contact info is on his Instagram page. That giant panda sculpture blew our minds.

Artist Ross McSweeney created this beautiful work of moving sculpture, which uses a series of cams to create a wave-like action. A tiny boat rocks back and forth as a wooden ocean moves below, and fish dive in and out of the waves. We also love his caterpillar marble machine.

We’re excited for the release of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. So is this talented artist from Woodart Vietnam. Watch as he takes a block of wood and meticulously carves it into a sculpture of the mystical Doctor and his numerous limbs in action as he manipulates time and space to his whim.

The Michelin Man, aka “Bibendum,” is one of the most iconic advertising mascots of all time. Awesome Restorations, got their hands on an antique metal sculpture of the rotund character and sandblasted away years of rust, then repainted it, restoring its former glory. He looked like a toasted marshmallow man before his makeover.

God of War’s protagonist Kratos is one of the most iconic characters in video game history. In this video, the very talented Dr. Garuda walks through the process of sculpting a miniature of the character, first by drawing a 2D reference image, bending a metal armature, building his body from clay, then painting in all the details.