Awesome Art & Design

This unique fidget spinner from MCA Studio features a mechanism inspired by the famed Wankel rotary engine. Like the engines found in some classic Mazda cars, it has a Reuleaux triangle that rotates in its center. Each is CNC machined from a combination of stainless steel and brass.

Scandinavian brand Indigofera is known for its oversized Norwegian wool blankets. They teamed up with artist Björn Atldax to create a series of eye-catching textile art. The surrealist images incorporate skulls, monsters, and traditional Mixtec symbology. Each blanket measures 2 m x 1.5 m (~6.56 ft x 4.92 ft) and will wrap you in warmth and weirdness.

The S is back with another really cool looking cardboard weapon. The laser-cut blaster looks like something straight out of a sci-fi first-person shooter, and fires projectiles by igniting small bursts of butane gas stored in water bottles hidden inside its ringed cardboard cylinders.

For his latest build, JBV Creative combined elements of a roller coaster with one of those rolling ball clocks. His enormous tabletop clock tells time using wooden balls that roll into multiple tracks representing hours, 10-minute increments, and minutes. It took weeks of designing, planning, and fabrication, but the finished piece is a true work of art.

AltDynamic is back with two larger sizes of its Superegg desk plaything. The machined metal eggs feature a superelliptical shape, and now come in 2.4″ (Mighty) and 2.88″ (Mega) variants. Each can be ordered in stainless steel, copper, or titanium, with mirror, satin, or machined finishes. Mini and Classic sizes are also available during this Kickstarter campaign.

We’ve seen machines that can draw patterns in sand, but this is the first time we’ve spotted one that was built using LEGO Technic components.  Brick Machines created this sand art machine with a magnetic assembly that moves along a set of custom aluminum rails using corkscrew gears driven by a Mindstorms controller and tech from PyBricks,

Artist Danny Huynh is known for his amazing custom-built animatronics. In this clip, he put an articulated Batman figure inside of an R/C vehicle and raced it around his neighborhood. The bat’s-eye-view footage of The Dark Knight in a drift truck is awesome. Also, he couldn’t resist racing the mailman.

While they’re not exactly state-of-the-art, mechanical displays can be quite fascinating to watch in action. In this video from Japan’s Karakuri channel, they show off a 3D-printed machine that displays digits on a pair of 7-segment units by pushing its keys. It has 213 parts in all, and no electrical components. Turn English captions on.

Love the grainy look of real 35mm film? It turns out you can still get compact film cameras from Ilford. The reusable Sprite 35-II Film Camera has a fixed-focus 31mm f/9 wide-angle lens and fixed 1/120s shutter speed, providing boundaries to challenge your creativity. It comes in silver/black, black/black, and silver/red versions and has a built-in flash.

Robinson Foundry shows how he took a digital 3D model of a human skull and used it to create a cast bronze sculpture. The Lost PLA method starts by making a 3D-print, coating it with a ceramic material, kiln-firing it to harden it and melt away the plastic, then filling it with molten metal and eventually chipping away the casting.

You know what would have made the Jurassic Park movies better? If the dinosaurs wielded weapons. Imagine if the velociraptors had Gatling guns or if the T-Rexes had flamethrowers. North of the Border gives us one of those things by sculpting a the king of the dinosaurs cosplaying as a fire-breathing dragon.

Normally, if you want a guitar and a bass, those are two instruments. Inspired by a weird prototype guitar shown in the Beatles Get Back documentary, Mattias Krantz engineered this unique guitar with a cylindrical neck that rotates beneath its player’s digits, allowing its player to switch instantly between guitar and bass strings. It’s also got a motor drive.

This unique modular stamp from Japan’ Shachihata makes it easy to make perfectly aligned calendars for any month. Its individual numbers and days of the week can be snapped together to stamp custom calendars onto paper. Arrange its digits vertically to make numbered lists. Available with English or Japanese day headers.

This science fiction short film tells an original story while demonstrating what’s possible with state-of-the-art computer graphics. Oscar-winning VFX artist Tim Webber of Framestore used Unreal Engine to create FLITE, which follows the story of a woman imprisoned in her hi-rise apartment building and the stranger who helps her make a daring escape from the tower.

Burls Art has created a few guitar bodies from colored pencils. This time, he made a 5-string bass using a similar technique. Before sealing the pieces in resin, he sorted and grouped the colors and fanned them out into a bold, angular design. He also added a timer to the video to show how long it took to build.

Etsy shop Fever Dream Supreme makes this giant-size d20 for Dungeons and Dragons players. Each 10-inch, 5-pound die is handcrafted from whitewood and hot-branded numbers on its 20 sides. It makes a great display piece or a hidden storage box if you opt for the removable panel. Available with or without stain or numbers.

A Bugatti Chiron costs at least $2 million. To save money, Steven Song and a team of builders made their own Bugatti using junkyard parts. They started with a busted-out Pontiac G6, then built a custom metal frame, sculpted a mesh and foam form, and covered it with Bondo. It wasn’t without setbacks, but they eventually finished the Walmart Bugatti.

We never really thought about it before, but some hammers are made with other hammers. This video from Process X takes us inside a small tool factory in Japan to see how a skilled blacksmith makes various traditional hammer heads by forging steel and shaping each one using a pneumatic power hammer and hand tools.

Enjoy every sip of your whiskey in style with this beautiful drinking glass, featuring a design inspired by a comet orbiting the Sun. Each is handcrafted using traditional Japanese techniques, creating a textured surface with an irregular but polished edge. Holds 380 ml. or 12.8 oz., and comes packaged in a wooden container.

ND Woodworking Art has created some amazing kid-scale vehicles for his son to ride in. This time, he spent 70 days building a mini tank with a steel frame, a wooden body, and motorized tracks. The design is based on a Swedish Army Stridsvagn 103. We’re not sure if carrying all those fuel cans on the exterior would be a good idea in a battle, though.

This extraordinary arcade machine is the brainchild of artist Harold Sangouard aka Harow. The made-to-order game system has a cabinet carved from Calacatta marble, sculpted with classical artwork inspired by video games. Expect a one-year lead time for production and a cost of $100,000+. Shipping the weighty machine can’t be cheap either.

In this short video from Posy, he shows off a neat visual effect that takes ordinary footage and highlights solely the parts that move. The resulting footage is artful and reveals aspects of each scene that might otherwise be overlooked. Best of all, Posy shows us how easy it is to replicate the effect yourself.

CGP Grey’s Cortex brand created the Sidekick, a wide-format notepad that works hand-in-hand with your computer workspace. It sits between you and your keyboard and has a large, gridded area for sketching and a narrow space for to-do lists on the right. It’s made with 60 pages of premium Munken Lynx paper with a cover made from recycled coffee cups.