With over 600,000 followers, and several hundred thousand plays on each of his videos, Andreas Wannerstedt is a well-known name in the world of satisfying loops. His work is strangely hypnotic, featuring swirling strings of jelly, pendulums just missing each other, and contraptions reminiscent of a Rube Goldberg machine. It’s easy to get stuck browsing his Instagram page, although hard to explain exactly what about it is so compelling.

“It’s crazy, actually,” Wannerstedt told CR, when questioned about his social media fame. “It became a niche for some reason, and I’m not really sure how. It escalated pretty fast when the followers started to come.”

Wannerstedt started working with 2D animation in the late 90s, after being introduced to some basic software at school, but quickly got hooked on learning new techniques and programs. In 2007 he started focusing on 3D animation, attempting to simulate architecture and real life objects. However, short films were time consuming, taking several months to finish. When Instagram came along, it was a chance to create shorter footage that could be completed in less than a day and then shared.