These surreal wood sculptures by Japanese sculptor Yoshitoshi Kanemaki will become so much more impressive once you see how much work it took to make them! For one of his latest sculptures, an otherwise-ordinary girl with 12 faces, Kanemaki created a series of progress photos that show the sculpture’s progress from crude log to finished work of art.

Thanks to the reference lines he draws on the log as it’s gradually whittled down by chisels and saws, we get to see how the strange girl depicted emerges from an otherwise formless mass of wood.

This bizarre sculpture isn’t even his strangest – all of Kanemaki’s peaces involve strangely twisted characters, many of which dance with skeletons as well. These twisted statues all seem to bespeak some sort of emotional or existential turmoil churning beneath their surfaces.