3D Animal Illusions by SWEO & Nikita (8 Photos)

May 29, 2026

By Vidar

Animals do not just sit on these walls. They seem to push through them.

A bus becomes snake territory. A building turns into an aquarium. A residential façade suddenly has a tiger leaning out of it, calm as a cat on a balcony. And now, in Le Mans, a whole apartment block appears to open into a floating blue world where a goldfish swims straight through the architecture.

Street Art Fest Grenoble-Alpes describes the French duo as Montpellier-based, self-taught painters shaped by 1990s hip-hop, spray paint, and graffiti culture, now recognized for 3D anamorphosis. Clos du Chêne identifies them as members of 5.7 Crew. That background matters: even in their cleanest illusions, the graffiti pulse is still there.

💡 Nerd Fact: Before becoming a duo, Street Art Fest Grenoble-Alpes says Sweo developed mainly on walls, while Nikita also worked on canvas and smaller pieces. That split helps explain why their public murals often mix wall-writing force with character and detail work.

Anamorphosis sounds technical, but their version feels physical. The image works when the viewpoint, wall, and real object line up. A bus, a façade, a painted frame, a crack, a cube, or a shadow can become part of the trick.

This Street Art Utopia archive tour follows SWEO & Nikita from early character work to newer illusion pieces where the city becomes part of the animal, the portal, the aquarium, and the trapdoor.

🔗 Follow SWEO on Instagram, Nikita 5.7crew on Instagram, explore SWEO’s website, and see their Street Art Fest Grenoble-Alpes profile

🐠 Hors cadre in Le Mans, France

Hors cadre is a perfect title. In French, it points to being outside the frame, and that is exactly what the mural does. The fish does not stay inside the painted blue rectangle. The cubes do not stay flat. The white ribbons slice across the building like pieces of architecture that have come loose.

The official Plein Champ page places the work at 7 allée Schubert in Le Mans and describes it as a 2026 Transformation murale. It also says the piece is part of the Quartier Poétique et Visuel project, built collectively with residents and local cultural and social structures.

Visually, this one feels like a cousin to the Calais and Abbeville fish murals, but the Le Mans façade gives the illusion a new rhythm. Real windows and balconies sit inside the composition, while turquoise blocks appear to float in front of the building. The orange fish becomes the moving body in the middle of it all: half aquarium creature, half street festival firework.

💡 Nerd Fact: Plein Champ notes that SWEO & Nikita worked from themes proposed by around twenty residents connected with Le Trait d’Unions: trompe-l’œil, positive aspects, an entrance into the neighborhood, conviviality, bright colors, and celebration. That makes the mural more than a clever 3D trick. It is a neighborhood welcome sign disguised as a portal.

🐍 Snake Bus in Larnas, France

Snake Bus is the piece that pulls the archive together. In the artists’ own post, SWEO and Nikita describe the bus as an anamorphosis made at MAD MAZE Experience in Larnas. They do not simply paint a snake beside a vehicle. They make the vehicle part of the animal. Windows sit behind coils. The roofline joins the curve. The old bus body becomes terrain, body, and prey at once.

The setting matters. MAD MAZE presents itself as a two-level wooden labyrinth and open-air museum of optical illusions, so the snake is not just claiming a wrecked bus. It is entering a place already built around wandering, surprise, and playful disorientation. The best detail is simple: the bus is not a prop beside the artwork. It is inside the artwork.

💡 Nerd Fact: MAD MAZE did not start as a mural wall. The park’s own timeline says the idea began in 2015 when Kevin discovered a 3D maze during a trip to New Zealand, then called in his cousin Maxime; work began in 2021 and the park opened in spring 2022. So the snake bus is part of a bigger origin story: a family-built maze that gradually became an outdoor art experiment. Read the MAD MAZE founders’ timeline.

🐅 3D Tiger Mural in El Berrón, Spain

The El Berrón tiger understands architecture. It does not sit on top of the building. It lives inside a painted frame, with paws and leaves pushing past the white border. The turquoise cubes give the wall depth, while the tiger’s weight makes the building feel occupied.

Street Art Cities places the mural on the Cuatro Vías building at Av. Langreo, 2, in El Berrón, as part of Siero’s MURALIA 2025 program. Local newspaper El Fielato reported, while the work was underway, that the project was the third MURALIA 2025 intervention and that the artists were painting a 3D jungle tiger on the Cuatro Vías façade. Since no official title has clearly surfaced, 3D Tiger Mural is used here as a descriptive title. The main thing is the way the tiger owns the wall.

🦋 Lace Butterfly in Caudry, France

Caudry is lace country, and SWEO & Nikita bring that local reference straight onto the wall. The artists’ post places the work at 2 Rue Montaigne for the Caudry Street Art Festival. See the wall on Google Maps.

The insect appears to hover in front of the façade, but the white lace pattern is the hook: a textile detail painted with aerosol precision. L’Observateur describes the mural as a butterfly with lace wings and 3D lettering, noting that Nikita handled the butterfly while Sweo worked on the lettering. It also says a ground marker across the street shows where to stand for the 3D effect. The turquoise jewel shapes, gold cubes, folded ribbon forms, and deep painted shadows keep shifting the mural between butterfly, brooch, sculpted relief, and sci-fi portal.

💡 Nerd Fact: Dentelle de Calais-Caudry® is not just a pretty regional name. The official label is reserved for lace woven in Calais or Caudry on Leavers looms by affiliated lace-makers, and the federation describes the method as rooted in a 200-year tradition. That turns the painted wings into a local manufacturing clue: the mural is wearing Caudry’s industrial heritage on its back. Explore the Dentelle de Calais-Caudry® label.

🐠 Le Poisson combattant in Calais, France

At the Rue du Commandant-Mouchotte / 2 Rue Vladislav Volkov corner in Calais, the façade becomes a vertical aquarium. The orange fighting fish has enough volume to feel wet and heavy, but the smartest part is the geometry: blue cubes and white ribbons create a fake structure for the fish to swim through.

Street Art Cities documents the work as a 2023 Calais Street Art Festival piece by Sébastien Sweo and Marlène Nikita, organized by Les Ateliers du Graff. Trompe-l’œil.info and Calais XXL identify it as Le Poisson combattant, with Calais XXL noting its 5th-place national Golden Street-Art ranking for 2023. The trick is clear right away. Then the wall keeps moving. The fish is not just escaping from the building. The building starts acting like water.

More photos on Street Art Utopia: 5 Photos of Gold Fish mural by Sebastien Sweo and Nikita in Calais, France.

🟡 Sortie de Poisson in Abbeville, France

Abbeville is the louder cousin to Calais: a golden fish pushes out of a red-brick side wall, fins flaring like fabric underwater. Street-Heart documents the mural under the title Sortie de Poisson, dated July 2024, at 29 Rue des Aubépines. The fish is brighter, the wall is warmer, and the illusion leans hard into movement.

Baie de Somme Habitat says the CURB-organized project brought two new gable murals to the Bouleaux-Aubépines-Platanes area, with Nikita and Sweo taking one of the walls. The turquoise cubes are not decoration. They guide the eye, marking where the mural pretends to leave the wall and take up space in the street. Add the glowing dots and the deep black opening, and a flat façade gets aquarium depth.

💡 Nerd Fact: The Abbeville wall has a hidden archive layer. Street-Heart connects it to the Soleil Levant district and notes that the area hosted the 2021 “Transition” exhibition in a building later destroyed in 2022. That gives the fish a second life beyond the animal image: it belongs to a neighborhood timeline of temporary art, demolition, and new public painting.

More photos on Street Art Utopia: Mind-Bending 3D Goldfish Mural by Sebastien Sweo and Nikita Transforms Streets of Abbeville, France.

🐆 Leopard Portal in Montpellier, France

The Montpellier leopard is smaller than the giant façade works, but it is sharp. A plain wall becomes a jungle window: cracked frame, creeping vines, forward paw, direct stare. It feels like the animal found a weak spot in the city and pushed through.

This is also where the duo’s graffiti roots are easy to feel. The illusion is controlled, but the wall still has that post-graffiti charge: line, character, attitude, and a little danger packed into one tight surface.

More on Street Art Utopia: 3D Post Graffiti Leopard by Nikita and Sebastien Sweo in Montpellier, France. The original post credits photos by Ced Street 34.

🐺 Girl With Wolf Hat in La Motte-Servolex, France

Before the giant fish, lace butterfly, and building-sized tiger, this La Motte-Servolex wall already shows the duo’s hybrid language: character work, wildstyle energy, animal force, blue ribbons, and dimensional pieces colliding.

The town’s February 2022 Infos Motteraines bulletin places the Le M.U.R work on Rue des Allobroges, esplanade Pergaud, and notes that SWEO and Nikita were present from 20 to 29 January to create the new wall. The girl in the wolf hood does not use one clean anamorphic trick like the later pieces. It feels more like graffiti, fantasy illustration, and 3D fragments learning to move together. You can see the ingredients that later become their full illusion language.

💡 Nerd Fact: Le M.U.R. comes from a very French idea: treating the wall like a changing public display rather than a permanent monument. Street Art Cities describes the original Oberkampf wall as a project where 17 works follow each other each year, with a new creation covering the previous one every three weeks. So the La Motte-Servolex wall plugs SWEO & Nikita into a culture where being painted over is part of the artwork’s life cycle.

Which SWEO & Nikita illusion tricks your eyes the most? Which one is your favorite?

Keep exploring 👇

Prefer classic browsing? Open latest posts →