Collaborative Eye Animation

Summary

A collaborative animation experiment by Jake Fried and 40 artists featuring a dense grid of hand-drawn eye illustrations in wildly varied styles, created for NFT NYC 2026.

Visual description

A dense 6 by 7 grid of square tiles, each holding a hand-drawn eye with a heavy fuzzy black outline and a large black pupil. Every tile has a different marker or pen treatment around the eye: colored lids, spirals, stripes, stars, lashes, devil horns, scribbled and patterned backgrounds in red, yellow, blue, purple and pink. Small numbers appear in the tile corners, and the same eye silhouette keeps the grid cohesive.

Key takeaway

Fix a single strong shared shape and outline weight, then let each contributor vary everything inside and around it; the repetition makes the variety read as a deliberate collage instead of chaos.

Reuse notes

Reach for this as a motion still reference. Pairs with experimental, illustrative directions. Original by Jake Fried.