Awesome Art & Design

Travel Oregon follows up its wonderful Studio Ghibli inspired promo with another amazing animation, featuring flying whales, anthropomorphic islands, and many more amazing things you won’t actually see when visiting. Still, it’s a beautiful place, and you should go see it.

Music and sound design studio Golden Hum shares a brief look inside the Rimowa factory, where sheets of polycarbonate are vacuum-formed into shape, then cut with waterjets, and assembled to form their premium hard-sided luggage. Watch a metal suitcase come together here.

Magician Chris Ramsay commissioned a puzzle box from furniture maker Craig Thibodeau. One year and $10,000 later, the box arrived, and Chris tried to solve it for the first time on video. Putting it back together seems to be equally puzzling.

Martin Heck of Timestorm Films journeyed to the South Pole to bring us this time-lapse footage of the colorful, dancing lights of the Aurora Australis. With nighttime temperatures as below -70°C/-95°F, he needed special housings to ensure the cameras didn’t fail.

Jampacked with amazing visuals, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is a must watch for any fan of animation, comic books, superheroes, or just good movies. Movies with Mikey provides an in-depth look at some of the art and animation techniques used to bring this masterpiece together.

“I’m not a very good woodworker… so that’s why I have to introduce a stupid gimmick that makes people want to watch my video.” Yep, so that’s why I did a thing decided to carve himself a wooden spoon using a metal spoon as his only tool. And some sandpaper… and a furnace… and…

Clearly taking inspiration from this build, maker Chris Salomone created a set of custom JoyCon cabinets to surround his big screen TV, transforming it into a gigantic replica of the Nintendo Switch and providing a place to store games and accessories.

Currently available in the UK, U-Build is a DIY modular and flat-pack wood and hardware system for building structures, furniture, and storage. You design your layout and dimensions on its website, then the parts are sent to you. You need only basic tools to put the frame together.

Prop maker David Guyton made a replica of Iron Man’s Nano Gauntlet from Avengers: Endgame. Rather than cheap materials, he built it out of steel, brass, and glass. But he will upload a template on his website so you can make it out of different materials if you want.

Motion designer Tomin decided to play around with some digital animation techniques, taking CG models of conventional objects like water bottles, cars, and iPhones and placing them into unexpected situations. We want a pair of those car shoes now.

Woodworker Carl Jacobsen made quite the mess in his shop for this experiment, in which he decided to turn a bowling ball on his lathe, chiseling away the ball’s outer surface and inner core to produce a surprisingly pleasing bowl. Carl says the biggest issue was the smell its core made.

Andriy Design’s desktop calendar is inspired by those vintage flip calendars which date back to the 1920s. Simply flip the day, date, or month modules, and it the next entry appears. It’s not available as completed product, but you can buy the files for laser-cutting from ArtHouseUA.

Fine furniture maker Craig Thibodeau created this incredible work of functional art. The cabinet not only features intricate marquetry and inlay work, but a series of drawers and compartments that can only be opened if you know its secrets. Puzzle designs by Robert “Stickman” Yarger.

Bobby Duke Arts plays with his wewd once again. This time, he transformed a bunch of scrap wood into an oversize baseball cap. Then he teamed up with maker William Osman to try and (unsuccessfully) make the hat’s brim follow the sun.

Artblox can take the waveform from a musical passage, words, or any other short sound, and etch it onto a block of clear acrylic. They can be personalized with your choice of color scheme, and an optional QR code which lets you play back the recorded sound via a mobile device.

The block-building game Minecraft is known for its incredibly rudimentary object textures. But game modder hodiltoN decided the game was due for an upgrade, and created a series of realistic textures for the game, which look especially nice when lit with using the SEUS PTGI shaders.

While most mirrors today are made in big factories, UK ornamental glass artist David Smith shows us how to do it the old school way. It’s done by taking a clean sheet of glass, pouring silver nitrite on one side, then carefully moving it to evenly coat its surface.

Spectrum analyzers are a nifty way to visualize music. But maker Platinum Kit decided the displays that come with graphic equalizers were too small, so he built a jumbo version with colorful LEDs placed behind acrylic blocks. He reversed the lows and highs, but it’s still super cool.

Directed by experimental artist Tobias Gremmler, music video for Björk’s latest track transforms the enigmatic Icelandic vocalist into weird and wonderful flora and fauna that look like they were birthed on strange alien planet.

Seo Gyeong-deok channels his lifelong love for anime by painting Gundam models and other figures in a vibrant two-dimensional cartoon style. Thestory met with Seo to learn more about his craft. He also accepts commissions. You can see more of his work on his Instagram page. Turn captions on.

Like many other makers, SKM loves to build things from cardboard. This time, he used what appears to be an off-the-shelf template to create a model of Iron Man’s iconic helmet, though this one is guaranteed to offer absolutely no level of protection to its wearer.

Next top model? How about an army of free and tireless ones? A Japanese company called DataGrid claims it has created a way to automatically generate whole body models of people who don’t exist. These virtual models can be given a variety of poses and clothing.

DKNG Studios‘ elegant, yet modern playing cards feature custom-illustrated face cards, gold accented two-tone suit colors, bicycle backs, a sweet embossed black box, and lots of subtle skull images worked in here and there.