There’s something about creating art that’s not quite reflective of our physical reality and then giving it life through motion that can be alternately beautiful and unnerving. The slight jerkiness of stop-motion animation only adds to the effect, while digital animation can take the surreality to a whole new level with mesmerizing movements. These recent animated projects are especially GIF-worthy (and in fact, are sometimes just GIFs that stand alone as works of art.)

Loving Vincent, a Fully Painted Feature Film

The last days of Vincent Van Gogh are gorgeously rendered in the artist’s hallmark swirling style in the new film Loving Vincent, which was created using thousands upon thousands of hand-painted frames.The directors first shot live-action footage of actors playing the scripted roles, and then had a team of artists over-paint the frames.

Persistence of Vision III by Ismael Sanz-Pena

From a single photograph he took of the Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway, animator Ismael Sanz-Pena created a mesmerizing continuous-motion animation simply by panning and zooming over the image.

REACTION by Anton Wall Söder

In a quest to learn more about VFX software Houdini, Swedish motion designer Anton Woll Söder experimented with particle-based animation. This short called ‘REACTION’ captures some of the results.

Flow/er by Alexa Sirbu and Lukas Vojir

Artists Alexia Sirbu and Lukas Vojir came together to produce a short animation called ‘flow/er,’ a piece that feels like a visual symphony of blooms crashing together. “In nature, it is often the simplest rules that lead to forming the most complex, beautiful forms,” they explain. “Flow/er is a visual poem that observes this through a design lens, combining our fascination with organic, raw aesthetic with foreign geometric forms. We observe natural laws take shape in a strange dance of meticulous choreography clashing with violent forces of nature.”

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Beautiful Animated Short Films

Diminutive flags wave in the wind, ferris wheels the size of clock gears turn, cranes rise and fall and tiny cars zoom around in this three-dimensional world made out of paper. Artist Charles Young has been working on his ‘Paperholm’ project for years, typically completing one miniature building every single day, mounting them to wood or stone and creating stop-motion animations from their moving parts.

Today, Young has amassed over 635 paper buildings, rollercoasters, vehicles and other elements of his miniature cities, putting them together into an impressively well-organized whole. A graduate of the Edinburgh College of Art with both bachelor’s and master’s degrees in architecture, Young initially took on the 365-day project to explore architectural forms in paper, hand-cutting them from watercolor paper and assembling them with PVA glue.

The first time Young created an animated GIF of one of his creations, he just wanted to demonstrate how smoothly a particular element spun in a circle. This turned out to be a pretty cool way of showing them off. He sketches, cuts and assembles each structure in a single sitting.

The resulting city is gleaming white and surprisingly well realized considering its two-dimensional origins. Each element is individually documented on the Paperholm tumblr so you can see how it works, and then take in entire blocks of the tiny creations as a whole.

A snippet of the imaginative and ever-changing opening sequence of HBO’s Game of Thrones series is recreated in stop-motion using over 7,600 paper cutouts made with Moleskine notebooks in this 40-second video. Made by Milan-based animation studio Dadomani to promote the brand’s new Game of Thrones notebooks, the moving models mimic the computer animation seen on the show, wherein three-dimensional structures emerge from the surface of a map and spring to life.

Opening with a view of the sigil of House Baratheon, the video sweeps through King’s Landing as paper gears turn and spires begin to retract. The tiny paper houses disappear as the stag-topped sigil spins, and the camera pans out to a classic Tolkien-style map of Westeros before the scene splits into four pieces.

These four components are revealed to be the individual notebooks in Moleskin’s Game of Thrones series, each covered with the dire wolves of the Starks, the Targaryen dragon and the Lannister lion. A fifth notebook, the collector’s edition only available in Moleskin stores, features an image of the Iron Throne. The silkscreened covers were designed by emerging artist Levente Szabó, and each notebook retails for $19.95 – $25.95.

The designers of the original animation took inspiration from Leonardo da Vinci’s machines to achieve an effect appropriate for the fantasy series, which is set in a fictional country in a time period recalling the real-world Middle Ages. The cog-filled engines beneath the surface of the map that power all of the movements above represent the secret machinations of the series’ main families, the Houses of Lannister, Baratheon and Stark, along with all of their allies and enemies. Check out how the paper version was created in the video above.

A million nerd fantasies come true with this bloody stop-motion fusion of Star Wars, The Simpsons and LEGOs entitled ‘Star Gore.‘ Reto Hochstrasser created an animated short that has Itchy and Scratchy battling it out in the Star Wars universe, with Yoda ultimately showing up to save the day. The scenes are epically bloody, fitting with the tradition of the Itchy & Scratchy Show, and the video opens with a re-creation of The Simpsons’ title sequence.

Hochstrasser reveals how he created Star Gore with a second behind-the-scenes video, painting sets and embedding them with LED lights before setting up the LEGOs. Fog machines add atmosphere while bowls of disturbingly realistic substances mimicking blood and entrails provide the necessary vomit factor.

This mashup of cartoons, live-action sci-fi/fantasy and everybody’s favorite childhood engineering toys is just the latest case of adults using LEGOs to create amazing and unexpected things. Check out 20 essential works of LEGO art, 12 LEGO architecture sets, and 13 LEGO gadgets.

Money art, including sculptures and collages made of coins or paper cash, proves that currency can be worth even more than its face value. These 32 works by 14 (more) artists were created by welding coins together, laser-cutting cash, painting on dollar bills and even just plastering an entire room with them. From stunningly detailed portraits to jaw-dropping stop-motion videos, these works of art range from social commentary to pure fun.

Portraits & More by Mark Wagner

(images via: escape into life)

Swirling, intricate portraits and drawings of beetles and human anatomy are among the most awe-inspiring works of artist Mark Wagner, co-founder of the Brooklyn Artists Alliance. Says Wagner of his choice to work with currency, “The one dollar bill is the most ubiquitous piece of paper in America. Collage asks the question: what might be done to make it something else? It is a ripe material: intaglio printed on sturdy linen stock, covered in decorative filigree, and steeped in symbolism and concept. Blade and glue transform it-reproducing the effects of tapestries, paints, engravings, mosaics, and computers-striving for something bizarre, beautiful, or unbelievable . . . the foreign in the familiar.”

London 2012 Sign Made from Coins

(images via: this is colossal)

It took several 2D and 3D artists to stack 31,010 coins into an enormous ‘London 2012’ sign for Cadbury’s Race Season, a challenge to find the world’s fastest racers. UK Agency Pretty Green decided to make the process of creating this sculpture a race, too – they sought ‘the world’s fastest coin stackers’ and were able to create the sign within 5 days.

My Money, My Currency by Hanna von Goeler

(images via: if it’s hip it’s here)

Artist Hanna von Goeler blocks out large areas on dollar bills, leaving only select details behind. Says the artist, “My currency work originated in California, while I was studying at UC Davis. I was very interested in camouflage at the time. This interest led me to create my first paintings on dollar bills, between 1992-94, in which I camouflaged/painted images onto and into bills. A death in the family led me to the east coast, and faced with the costs of living in New York City on an artist’s budget, I continued to paint on money.”

Carved Cash Sculptures by Scott Campbell

(images via: this is colossal)

Scott Campbell’s laser-cut currency sculptures are absolutely jaw-dropping. In a 2011 exhibit called Noblesse Oblige, Campbell, a tattoo artist, cut graphic forms into stacks of cash, making a statement about privilege and the waste of money.

Intricate Currency Collages by C.K. Wilde

(images via: artichoke yink press)

Vibrant and amazingly detailed, these currency collages by artist C.K. Wilde are made of money from around the world. They’re so colorful, it’s easy to forget that it takes untold hundreds or thousands of dollars to produce them. Says Wilde, who is also a co-founder of the Brooklyn Artists Alliance along with Mark Wagner, “Through the ages art has borne witness to the suffering that power inflicts upon the powerless. Wilhelm Worringer wrote that art is, ‘Creation in order to subdue the torment of perception.’ So while some dream and wage war, art continues to offer an alternative view – a world defined by its capacity for compassion and communion rather than destruction and death.”

Insert Coin Stop Motion Animation Video

(images via: this is colossal)

This hypnotic stop-motion animation video was created using thousands of coins against a black fabric background. The two artists work as quickly as possible, pushing the coins around on the base to form various patterns. It took about 7 weeks to complete this video.

Carpenter’s Tools by Stacey Lee Webber

(images via: staceyleewebber.com)

This set of carpenter’s tools, made entirely from cut and bent pennies, is just one example of the stunning coin sculptures made by artist Stacey Lee Webber. The metalsmith spends countless hours bent over coins in her studio, punching out details and using both the positive and negative cut-outs to form new objects. “Coins are more than currency, They are metal objects that hold historical tales as they are passed through the hands of millions of people on a daily basis,” Webber says. “In my artwork I have highlighted the personal history of coins by using them as a material to make art objects. I have chosen to construct objects out of pennies, quarters, nickels, dimes and foreign coins that reflect the often disregarded physical struggle the everyday blue collar laborer undergoes to earn the value of these stamped metal discs.”

Money Dress by Dave Cole

(image via: clayton parker)

1,000 one-dollar bills were used to form ‘Money Dress’, a sculpture by Dave Cole. Cole made the bills into continuous strands and used them to knit the dress in a pattern of a Vera Wang gown.

Pop Culture Cash by James Charles

(images via: my modern met)

The familiar faces on American paper currency are transformed into faces that are just as recognizable – but far more modern. James Charles turns George Washington and Abe Lincoln into the Tin Man, Spock, Yoda, an Oompa Loompa, Mr. T, Iggy Pop and many other pop culture figures. Experimenting with ink and papers that are virtually identical to those used by the U.S. Mint, Charles even alters the text below each figure, adding sayings like ‘Pity the Fool’, ‘Tea Party MILF’ and ‘Chicken Choker’.

Fruit, Animals & Architecture by Won Park

(images via: behance)

Origami artist Won Park uses dollar bills to create tiny sculptures of telephones, apples, pigs, buildings, cars and more. This series was part of a rebranding effort for Payment System Group.

Currency Rings by Sophie Kemp

(images via: sophie kemp)

Artist Sophie Kemp wanted to give money away – but do it in an unusual fashion. “I decided to take the cold cut process of giving people money and enhance the experience of this action. I decided to take a dollar bill and use origami folds to make it into a ring as the giving of a ring has such emotional connections. I then made these rings out of 12 different currencies.”

Dollar Bill Koi by Mizu Kami and Won Park

(images via: mizu kami)

Noted currency artist Won Park came up with the design for this intricately folded origami koi fish made from a dollar bill, which was physically created by Mizu Kami.

$100,000 on the Guggenheim Museum Walls

(images via: my modern met)

When artist Hans-Peter Feldmann won the Biennial Hugo Boss Prize, bestowed by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation for achievement in contemporary art, he was awarded $100,000 and a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim. This is what he chose to do with both. 100,000 dollar bills cover the gallery walls and pillars. “I’m 70 years old, and I began making art in the ’50s,” Mr. Feldmann told the NY Times .“At that time there was no money in the art world. Money and art didn’t exist. So for me, $100,000 is very special. It’s incredible really. And I would like to show the quantity of it.”

Sofa Made of Coins by Johnny Swing

(images via: freshome)

This gleaming sofa, a sculpture called ‘All the King’s Men’ by Johnny Swing, is crafted from welded coins on a steel support. It took thousands of half-dollar coins to create this 97-inch-long work of art.