There are few big screen deaths more satisfying than that of Nazi Major Arnold Toht. The evil Gestapo officer’s face melting off of his skull at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark remains one of the most memorable, gruesome moments in movie history. We would not normally wish Toht’s fate on any other person or thing, let alone a talented artist’s sculpture, but this active Indiana Jones homage to the awesome, destructive power of the Ark of the Covenant is less a a work of art and more of a performance piece. And it was made possible with crayons.

Artist Steven Richter, who has blown us away with his time lapse videos of his Voldemort and Thanos busts, is back with yet another infamous movie villain recreation. Only instead of trying to capture Toht’s likeness either before or after the meltdown, Richter mixed his sculpting clay with red crayons so he could then recreate Toht’s actual demise. With some heat applied his Toht bust becomes a red, runny mess.

There’s a small part of us that feels bad all of that work went into creating this amazing sculpture just for it to be completely destroyed after the fact, because it probably belonged in a museum. Fortunately that’s easily overcome by how incredible the end result is. If we didn’t see any of the work that went into this sculpture we’d just assume it was the original VFX for Raiders of the Lost Ark.

And knowing it was done with crayons makes watching Toht’s face melt even more satisfying.

What other famous film scene would you love to see recreated this way? In our comments below give us another movie meltdown he should sculpt next.

Featured Image: Steven Richter