This is an art form in its own right. I've seen wheels with 144 spokes where the nipples are so close together you cannot fit a spoke spanner in between them. Each spoke was thus turned with a tiny flat spanner that can rotate only a few degrees at a time.
If you look at the wheel of the first bike in the featured section, you'll see that the wheels are not workable wheels, yet the bike stands. The spokes pull clockwise on the one side and anti-clockwise on the other. This means the hub is in torsion and therefore there is just about zero tension in the spokes. To build a wheel so that it at least runs straight with so little tension is quite something.