Turning a 21-Ton Cement Canvas Into an Animated Walk Cycle

How three artists, one papercut puppet, and a Wacom Movink Pad Pro 14 brought a wall to life at Switzerland's Wandfestival#

There are murals, and then there's what happens when three artists decide a static wall isn't enough — and set out to paint an animation instead.

This is the story of how a spontaneous workflow discovery turned into a 12-frame walk cycle, painted across three connecting walls, in the shadow of the Alps.

The accidental discovery#

It started on an entirely different job. I was helping fellow artist Arturo on another wall painting, and I'd brought my Wacom Movink Pad 14 along for the ride. Almost by accident, we found a workflow that changed how we'd approach murals from then on: we photographed the wall, dropped the image into Magma, and suddenly had a collaborative digital canvas layered over the physical one. We could test ideas on the fly and see instantly what would actually work on the wall — no guesswork, no wasted paint.

That one discovery planted the seed for something bigger.

An invitation to Chur#

One month later, we were on our way to Switzerland, invited by legendary mural artist Bane from Chur to take part in the Wandfestival. Joining forces with Bane, Amadeus Waltenspühl, and Artur Fast, we decided to attempt something a little unusual for a mural: instead of one static image, we'd paint 12 frames of a walk cycle — designed to be photographed and played back afterward as a real animation.

Getting there took real experimentation. I built out multiple versions of the walk cycle, moving between 2D and 3D animation workflows until the timing and weight of the motion finally felt right.

Meet Urs#

Because we were committed to an analog process — no projector, no traced outlines — Amadeus had the idea to build a papercut puppet to help us block out proportions and poses on the fly. That puppet became "Urs," and he quickly turned into the unofficial fourth member of the crew, striking every pose we needed and, after some negotiation, earning the right to star in his very own frame.

Traveling with the Wacom meant we could keep working on the wall indirectly the entire trip — refining poses and layouts long before a single brushstroke touched cement.

The real challenge: continuity#

Once wall prep was done, the hardest part of the whole project became clear: continuity. Every frame needed a completely different pose, but each limb, proportion, and position had to be exactly right for the illusion of movement to hold together. On paper, that kind of precision is manageable. Scaled up to a 4.4 by 2.5 meter wall, it's an entirely different problem — every small error becomes impossible to hide.

We built out the skeleton and core proportions of each pose first, checking the sequence as a whole before ever committing to final linework. Only once that foundation was locked in could painting actually begin.

Three artists, one triangle#

The three walls were arranged to form a triangular space you could walk around — and each artist brought their own voice to their section.

Amadeus is one of the most accomplished illustrators and designers I know personally. Spend five minutes with one of his sketchbooks and you'll walk away with a completely different sense of how far design, simplification, and expression can be pushed. True to form, he turned his wall into something unmistakably his own — a striking mix of abstraction and knights.

Artur, meanwhile, is probably the most experienced traditional painter among us. A longtime fan of H.R. Giger, he painted one frame in Giger's style — which led to one of the strangest, most memorable moments of the trip. A woman approached and asked Artur if he knew who H.R. Giger was. "Of course," he said, "I'm a big fan." She replied that we were standing in Giger's birth town, and that she was Mia Bonell — his ex-wife.

We were floored. It turned out she'd had a significant influence on Giger's work over the years — a genuinely surreal collision of art history and coincidence.

A wall that became a collaboration#

That encounter mattered a lot to me, because from the start I wanted my wall to be something the festival itself could interact with — and one frame in particular became exactly that.

That frame was Bane. Specifically, it was Bane's calf — famously tattooed with a tiny spray-can cap by everyone close to him, in a tattoo session with his loved ones. We recreated that tattoo on the wall exactly as it exists on him. Once I finished the frame, other artists at the festival stopped by and added their own touches to it, turning a single panel into a genuine group collaboration.

From wall to animation#

With all twelve frames finally painted, the Wacom came back into play one last time: we photographed every frame, pulled them into animation software, and watched the walk cycle come together — line by line, shape by shape, frame by frame.

Seeing it all move as one continuous sequence, after everything it took to get there, was one of the best moments of one of the most memorable art festivals we've ever been part of — right in the heart of Switzerland.