You may have seen this amazing animation and thought it took an impossible amount of work to create, but there are multiple sites tools, and do-it-yourself tutorials that greatly simplify the process. This particular piece, which has been circulating the web, is a GIF from the music video below (scroll a few minutes in to see various examples).

Popular enough now to warrant its own definition and description, here is a summary of the trending phenomena: “Hyper-lapse photography [is] a technique combining time-lapse and sweeping camera movements typically focused on a point-of-interest.” Other names for this include: Walklapse, Spacelapse, Stop-Motion Time-lapse, Motion Timelapse and Moving Timelapse.

As for those wishing to follow suit and create something similar: the Google Street View Hyperlapse creator is by far the easiest online generator for these kinds of panoramic captures – you simply set start and end points as well as a point of focus then click a button. Be warned: experimentation with this tool may be habit-forming.

Per this tool’s creators, who have made their API-based work openly available on GitHub, “creating them [can] require precision and many hours stitching together photos taken from carefully mapped locations. We aimed at making the process simpler by using Google Street View as an aid, but quickly discovered that it could be used as the source material. It worked so well, we decided to design a very usable UI around our engine.”

For those who want to customize their work and take it to the next level, the video above walks creators through a more direct use of Google Maps, screen captures and more nuanced edits. While their approach presumes you have and know how to use a video editor (higher barrier to entry), they also go into more detail about how to pick the perfect shots. For instance, their video explains how to line them up and utilize motion blur effects in the foreground to enhance the visual experience – all techniques that can be applied in Photoshop or a similar program to GIFs as well as videos.

Finally, lest you think this is a brand-new fad, consider Devil’s Circuit from Takashi Ito, which took the same wraparound approach to buildings in 1988 – the big difference now is simply the accessibility and ease of tools with which anyone can make something of this kind.

This video thrives on convention – specifically: breaking with it. In the same vein as M.C. Escher, The Matrix or, more recently, Inception (or even the building flips and slides in Transformers), this surreal experience calls into question everyday architectures that surround us.

Imagine a world where urban fabric was what the latter implies: a delicate, woven-together series of structures and infrastructure forever flipped and rearranged at the whim of … whom? Perhaps you, perhaps another consciousness, or perhaps something created by a blind watchmaker, as it were, rotating city blocks like rows on a Rubik’s Cube.

Be sure to view the above realistic animated video in full size for the complete effect. Our brain recognizes patterns, then expects those things within such patterns (like trains on rails, or a waterfall) to conform to known laws of physics and thermodynamics – strip away that certainty and you start to learn something about human cognition and our relationship to world.

From the project creator, Chris Kelly, who created this as a graduate project: “Our understanding of space is not always a direct function of the sensory input but a perceptual undertaking in the brain where we are constantly making subconscious judgements that accept or reject possibilities supplied to us from our sensory receptors,” he says. “This process can lead to illusions or manipulations of space that the brain perceives to be reality.”

The thesis that goes with these videos and images:  Time and Relative Dimensions in Space: The Possibilities of Utilising Virtual[ly Impossible] Environments in Architecture. “The redirection techniques and the use of overlapping architecture allow the same physical space to hold a much larger virtual space”, giving it all kinds of applications in collaborative gaming and interactive art as well as architectural and urban design.

More on the project: “The aim of the rubix project was to develop an animation that described a conceptual tool for deploying these malleable virtual environments that could be used by their creators to shift space around us. The rubix concept stemmed from the need for an algorithmic formula for controlling the use of redirection techniques; it allows for many different spatial combinations whilst a level of control is constantly maintained. In the animation the initial Escher-esque space is a representation of our perceptual system where huge amounts of information arrive in the brain from multiple streams. The process of perception involves the brain selecting and rejecting contradicting pieces of information leading to a perception of reality that only gives us glimpses into the world we are in.”

Graffiti art is a big part of the urban voice. It has become its own art form and developed its own subculture. But there are big risks involved in urban graffiti, and not all of us are willing to take those risks. If you love the look of graffiti art and lettering but don’t want to deface property or risk legal troubles, an online graffiti creator can safely satisfy your artistic impulse. Or if you’re looking for a product that’s uniquely yours, you can use a tutorial to create your own graffiti in Photoshop.

Draw Here

Draw Here lets you tag online while you’re visiting a web page, so you can leave your mark all over your favorite sites. When you create a masterpiece, you can choose to save it and share it with other users. And if you own a website, you can add a Draw Here button to invite visitors to scrawl all over your pages.

Graffiti Creator

Graffiti Creator is one of the most fun online graffiti creators we’ve found. You choose your font, type in a message, and choose from several effects to enhance your graffiti. Customize your colors, and then you’ve got your very own graffiti creation. If you’re up for a challenge, join the current months battle: submit a graffiti piece of the selected word and compete against other artists. While you’re there, be sure to stop by the gallery to check out pictures of real-life graffiti.

Photoshop Graffiti

You can create plenty of awesome things with Photoshop, including realistic-looking graffiti. This tutorial from PS masters Photoshoptalent (part 2 here) will guide you through adding a graffiti tag to an existing photo. As the narrator says, you can brag to your friends that you’re anti-establishment without actually going through the trouble of doing any real graffiti.

This tutorial doesn’t put the graffiti tag into a photo; rather, it just helps you draw a cool tag with the help of some special brushes and simple techniques. Then you’re free to put it onto your website, make a desktop wallpaper out of it, or whatever you like.

This tutorial gives step-by-step instructions to create realistic-looking graffiti that  you can insert into your existing photos. It even includes details such as fading the lettering so that it looks like it’s been on the wall for a while. Once you’re a master graffiti maker, you can draw on pictures of your own house, landmarks and historic sites with no guilt or danger.

Graffiti Playdo

Graffiti Playdo lets you create awesome graffiti with other people who are online at the same time. Much like the chat rooms of yesteryear, several people are in each room. Every person gets a turn to paint, and when you’re done you’ve got a collaborative public art project that you helped create without ever leaving your desk chair.

ZeWall

Playing with ZeWall feels almost like you’re really there. The applet lets you paint on pictures of real backgrounds with a variety of brushes. Paint brick walls, plaster walls, trees, trains, trucks and more without ever worrying about getting caught. The best pieces are compiled into massive virtual frescoes that visitors can peruse.

Graffiti Studio (LRPD Vandalsquad)

This game gives you the thrill of painting in different locations and hiding to avoid getting caught. Create your masterpieces on trains, but be careful of the Vandal Squad, who will come after you from time to time. Hide to avoid them until they’re gone, then carry on with your virtual vandalism. You can choose to download the game or play online.