Artist Rafael Varona crams magical stories into tiny GIFs

Two years ago, artist Rafael Varona caught the world’s attention with a series of animated GIFs that depicted magical worlds trapped inside tiny glass bottles. The success of the “Impossible Bottles” series led to a number of new illustration gigs, and Varona eventually moved from Berlin to Amsterdam to focus on animation. But he never stopped thinking about those tiny glass bottles.“It was clear that I always had to do a second part,” he says. “In between job