Awesome Art & Design

Designed by December Boys, these unique playing cards feature a twisty black and white zig-zag pattern on both their fronts and backs, creating for dramatic illusions for cardistry enthusiasts. Comes with four double-backed green cards for chromakeying effects in videos.

Ukraine model designer Denis Ohrimenko of TimeForMachine makes a variety of cool laser-cut wood kits, including a series of awesome robot monsters. Each one has movable legs which can be swapped out with other models. Choose from Scorpio MN 3.1, Scarabeus MN 9.1, Arachnoid MN 2.1, and Prometeus MN 1.1 designs.

Black Light Visuals shows us how they use a tank filled with water and various colors of paints to create a truly one-of-a-kind marbled shoe design. Here, they dip a pair of ordinary white Converse Chuck Taylors and turn them into a wearable work of art.

HeroQuest is a tabletop fantasy game that’s been around since 1989. As a fan of the game, LEGO builder King Glorious Squirrel has designed an impressive concept for a set that’s packed with tons of details, wonderful dungeons and minifigs, and is playable. Show your support for the project on LEGO Ideas.

This boxed set comes with a total of 100 full-color postcards, with more than 20 unique designs, each based on the final frames of one of Studio Ghibli’s incredible feature-length animated films. Each 5 1/2″ x 3 3/4″ card would make a beautiful piece of wall art, individually, or framed together.

Give your headphones an appropriate home between listening sessions with this stand from Luckies of London. The hand-shaped stand is posed in the familiar devil’s horns gesture, signifying that you’re ready to rock. It’s made from cast resin with an antique gold finish. We promise Gene Simmons won’t sue you if you buy it.

An elegant and unique collection of beer glasses from Swedish glass maker Sempli and designer Daniele ‘Danne’ Semeraro. The set includes IPA, Pils, Pint, and Birra style glasses, each featuring a bold modern outline, and a mountain peak at its bottom.

Retro system master builder Love Hultén continues to outdo himself, this time creating a sweet game cabinet not only inspired by the classic Nintendo Famicom system, but has a fully-playable console built-in. It also packs an old-school 9″ Sony Trinitron CRT, and has storage for controllers inside, and cartridges on top.

Mashable introduces us to Tomislav Topic and Thomas Granseuer of Quintessenz. The duo creates colorful and dynamic art installations by spray-painting flexible mesh material, then layering them into gradations of color. When set against real-world backdrops, they look almost like digital imagery.

Visual artist Nick Cobby combined amazing top-down drone footage with abstract digital art to create the hypnotic video for Max Cooper’s Perpetual Motion, an audio-visual piece commissioned by London’s Barbican Centre. The work transforms the movements of people into ever-changing geometric patterns.

We’ve seen footage of a factory where they make animatronic dinosaurs but never really got a look at how they’re made. This clip from the Discovery UK edition of How It’s Made walks us through the process of transforming foam and metal into a moving, mechanical monster, with a focus on sculpting and molding its body.

Artist Iris Scott doesn’t believe in paintbrushes. Instead, she creates detailed and vibrant images using only her gloved fingers. Her works include people, animals, landscapes, water, and urban scenes. Find more of her art on her website, and canvas prints are available here.

Headed by blacksmith Aaron Cergol, Cergol Forge makes axes, knives and other hand tools. It’s most famous for its beautiful hammers, which often have forged, carved or burned details. In addition to its in-stock pieces, the shop accepts custom orders.

A trio of classical musicians teamed up with interactive artists Ouchhh on this innovative performance art work for Ars Electronica, using sensors to measure data from its cellist’s Delta, Theta, Alpha, Beta and Gamma brainwave activity to generate real-time visuals influenced by emotion, focus, auditory, and other neural response.

Serve a meal on the most technical dinner plates ever. Dobreff Design’s square plates are handmade with real carbon fiber, sandwiched under glass to make them smooth and food safe. They look great, but aren’t very practical, as they’re expensive, handwash only, and not dishwasher or microwave safe.

Go on a fascinating journey through Zildjian’s Norwell, MA factory, home of the world’s most sought after cymbals. Watch as metal castings are flattened, trimmed, hammered, milled, and gradually worked into the ideal shape for producing the perfect sound. We love that they didn’t cover up the factory sounds with music.

What starts out as a few styrofoam spheres, aluminum foil, and some hunks of clay serves as the casting form for an incredibly detailed monster sculpture, courtesy of artist Nick Brown of LoreCraft. The finished piece has even got spikes and teeth that glow under black light.

Travel to an exotic planet where a creature finds itself banished, and while exiled, it stumbles onto something unexpected which could help it take revenge on those who sent it away. From the illustration style to its orange color palette, to its concise storytelling, Frederic Siegel’s animated short makes for some intense viewing.

Drew Tetz created these awesome business cards which display an animation when played on a turntable under bright light and viewed through a camera, like a phenakistoscope. Be sure to check out Drew’s laser-cut turntable animations too.

Animator Raphael Vangelis pays tribute to all the lost time spent watching spinning circles, hourglasses, beachballs, and progress bars on our computer screens, by replicating the idea with stop-motion animation and 3D printing. The behind the scenes video equally enthralling.

Master doodle artist Lei Melendres‘ creative coloring book sends you on a mission to explore weird and creepy scenes filled with hundreds of wacky characters and hard to find objects. Once you find your objectives, simply color them in, then move on to the next challenge.

The Titans of CNC: Academy rightfully brag about their electronic machining equipment and skills by transforming a hefty 218 pound billet of aerospace grade titanium into a stunning sculpture of a lion’s head. In the end, they milled away over 100 pounds of material to reveal the metal king of the jungle.

(Gore) Directed by a team of students from computer graphics animation school MoPA, this intense short film envisions a dark undersea world where creatures have evolved and adapted in strange and fascinating ways after pollution ruins their habitat. Making of here.