Awesome Art & Design

Urban planner and game designer Konstantinos Dimopoulos is working on Virtual Cities, an atlas featuring the cities in video games. It will feature maps, analysis and more for over 40 video game cities, including Half-Life‘s City 17, GTA V‘s Los Santos and Silent Hill.

Artist Richard Wilkinson has an ongoing series called Arthropoda Iconicus, where he depicts pop culture characters and objects as realistic but fictional insects. The latest batch was inspired by Star Wars. You can get them as print on his online shop.

Maker of things Izzy Swan shows off a building technique that makes it look like layers of wood have been woven together into a form that should be impossible to pull off. We won’t give away the trick, but it takes a whole lot of work to pull off the illusion.

This clicky mechanical keyboard captures the essence of classic typewriters. It works as a dock for tablets, offers both Bluetooth and wired connectivity, and its clever carriage knob doubles as a volume and backlight brightness control. Coming to Indiegogo June 2018.

Custom sculpture and display maker Tom Spina Designs was recently commissioned to create 50 life-size heads and sets of matching fur panels for Gentle Giant’s Chewbacca statues. Each head was meticulously handpainted and then given a precision hairdo.

(Flashing Images) Filmmaker Emanuele Kabu created this frenetic short film to document his bittersweet relationship with his hometown. The abstract imagery captures the essence of the place and his feelings about the small Northern Italian town of Belluno.

Mark special occasions with cw&t’s Time Since Launch. It’s an extremely accurate clock that you start only once and can never reset again. It lasts up to 40 years on two replaceable AA batteries. It counts up to 2,738 years, or about 1,000,000 days.

Wired spoke with Method Studios’ Visual Effects Supervisor Daryl Sawchuk for a glimpse at how the company made the visual effects for Black Panther‘s suits as well as the climactic battle. It never ceases to amaze us how much of movies these days are CGI.

The Surface Hub 2 was designed to help teams collaborate and communicate. It’s a PC with a 4K 50.5″ touchscreen display that can be used in landscape or portrait. Up to four Hub 2s can be connected to each other, and multiple Windows users can log in to access their files.

A look at one of the most incredible LEGO models we’ve ever seen – a 36 foot-long replica of the US presidential 747 jumbo jet. Apparently, it was built from a 1 million bricks. The model has been making the rounds at LEGO expositions in Poland since 2016.

Kinetic sculptor and Strandbeest inventor Theo Jansen shows off one of his coolest builds, a wind-powered walking machine that pulls an undulating caterpillar-like body behind it. The name means “Mule” but we don’t quite see the resemblance.

We love the unique and minimal modern design of this solid metal opener from Croatia’s VAU. The triangular structure provides strength and leverage, and its flat base allows it to stand as a countertop sculpture when not in use. Choose from aged brass or satin silver finishes.

Artist, designer, and musician Tim Alex Jacobs or Mixtela shows off one of the coolest business cards ever. His custom-designed card has a built in printed circuit board and metallic keys that serve as a tiny stylophone-style MIDI controller when plugged into a USB port.

Artist Heath Knuckles creates stunning organic works of art by taking pieces of uniquely textured wood, cutting them into layers, and filling the in-between bits with colored resin. He then works them on the lathe into a perfect spherical shape. More here.

Animator Alessandro Bavari assaults our eyes, ears, and brains with this headbanging short film starring a disembodied digital head that gets pounded repeatedly by bass rhythms for nearly 7 minutes, distorting its form to the driving beat.

Become an expert in Adobe Photoshop, InDesign, and Illustrator with this extensive series of online courses in the world’s most popular photo editing, layout, and digital drawing tools. In all, there’s nearly $1200 worth of lessons here, so it’s quite a bargain.

Ash Thorp and XiaoLin “Zaoeyo” Zeng are huge fans of Katsuhiro Otomo’s classic anime, AKIRA, so they did what any superfans with the time and artistic talent would do, they created an eye-popping animated tribute to the film. It’s way too short, but still amazing.

We love the look of these unique cast metal desk accessories, each of which is inspired by natural terrain. They’re perfect for bringing order to glasses, keys, coins, phones, jewelry, pencils, paper clips, and more. Choose from raw metal or white finishes.

To prove just how versatile cardboard can be, Houston-based Victory Packaging turned up to a tradeshow with a 16-foot-tall gear-driven sculpture reminiscent of the space travel portals from Stargate. This isn’t the only time they built something awesome with cardboard.

Architect Michael Bidner and designer Elke Adam-Bidner’s unique chess set looks like something out of a modern art museum’s collection. The LED backlit board is crafted from 64 varied height cubes in alternating red and white, along with a set of minimal chess pieces.

Beyond Object’s sculptural metal writing instrument is the perfect pen for fidgeters. One of its sections is misaligned by default, and must be rotated back into position in order for the pen’s tip to emerge. Choose from champagne, gunmetal grey, rose gold, or silver.

Most of the builds we’ve seen from The Q are small enough to carry, but the serial maker’s latest construction is substantially larger. It took over 400 hours to put together this 1.5:1 scale model of a Formula 1 race car, made entirely from soda cans and glue set onto a PVC chassis.

Ash Thorp and Christopher Bjerre’s animated short film is light on plot by heavy on style and visual impact. The 2-1/2 minute film is about “finding yourself amidst the noise around you.” Best watched fullscreen, and with headphones.