Awesome Art & Design

While stuck at home with some free time on his hands, car enthusiast Brian King aka AWDcutlass decided to rebuild a full-size GM LS V8 engine inside of a transparent acrylic shell. It’s pretty wild to see all the parts moving inside of it, and it looks especially awesome when he turns on the LED lighting. See Part 1 of the build here.

For as groundbreaking as the CGI animated visuals were in the original Toy Story, Gary Rydstrom’s sound design was every bit as important in conveying the stories of Woody, Buzz, and company. The Royal Ocean Film Society invites us to listen to some of the sound effects that helped bring the Toy Story universe to life.

Didier Ghez’s six-volume series delves into the lesser-known art of Disney Animation. Each book is filled with rare images gathered from the depths of the Walt Disney Archives and the Disney Animation Research Library, along with untold stories of the artists behind the scenes. Start with the 1930s and work your way to 2020.

In the 1800s, an engineering reference book showed off a pulley design that could expand its size. Angus of Maker’s Muse wanted to see if he could replicate the part using 3D printing, and along the way found a different use for it, and incorporated the mechanism into a nifty looking puzzle box.

This rubberized vinyl floor mat lets you create your own custom patterns. Each mat comes as a blank white canvas, along with 150 black hexagonal tiles which easily snap into place. The tiles are removable and repositionable, and you can buy additional tiles in a variety of colors.

Bitluni’s Lab continues to upgrade his DIY video wall project by supersizing it to 1920 ping pong ball pixels, each illuminated by an RGBW LED. With its latest circuit, it can stream live video at up to 74fps. Unlike the prior versions, he didn’t have to drill tons of holes, and it’s made up of multiple small panels instead of one big one.

There’s software out there that can stylize images, but this technology makes images from real wood. Its algorithms compare greyscale levels between images and patterns in wood veneer, then instructs a CNC machine to cut out pieces that can be assembled to form a complete portrait. Two Minute Papers explains.

Woodworker Frank Howarth likes to celebrate Christmas by making his own ornaments. This year, he took some wood from a maple tree and turned it into a segmented sphere on his lathe. He then used his CNC mill to cut the “X” pattern into it. The 6″ wood ball has a smaller wood ball inside that makes a rattling sound.

If you want an impressive work of glass art, you turn to Jack Storms, but his works take months to complete and cost thousands. After seeing one of Jack’s amazing Spectrum Cubes in Guardians of the Galaxy, ResinAce tried to approximate the effect using resin and dichroic film. It’s not as intricate as the real deal, but still very cool.

We’re not sure if they’re street legal, but we think every car should have taillights like the ones on this 1991 Nissan Skyline GTS-4. Steve Molans of Skeptik Innovations built these custom lights which use RGB LEDs and mirrors to create an infinite effect and can change colors. They still work as normal brake lights and turn indicators.

Last Christmas, maker Jiří Praus decided he wanted a unique ornament. So he set about building a light-up sphere that can display colorful patterns. He built the orb using meticulously-soldered brass wires, 194 individual RGB LEDs, and an ESP32 microcontroller. Check out the full build details on Instructables.

This hardcover art book catalogs hundreds of forms, patterns, textures, and colors extracted from natural things like fruits, veggies, insects, fish, and more. It’s a great addition to any artist’s or designer’s reference library, providing a fresh source of creative inspiration.

While Darth Maul might not have turned out to be the most impressive villain in Star Wars history, he sure looked the part. Watch as artist Dr. Garuda crafts an picture-perfect sculpture of the spiky-headed baddie. He just needs to team up with Boylei Hobby Time to add a light-up version of his double lightsaber.

Norman Reedus is beloved for his portrayal of Darryl Dixon on The Walking Dead. Reedus is also an avid photographer, and he took advantage of his time deep in the woods of Georgia to capture intimate, humorous, and macabre portraits of his co-stars, film crew, and friends. Available in Hardcover or a Collector’s Edition.

The Fidget Flip is a unique stress-relief toy that combines visual and audible stimuli to keep your mind occupied. The laser-cut acrylic plaything is filled with exactly 750 tiny metal spheres, which create a calming sound and mesmerizing visual as you tilt it from side-to-side. Not recommended for young children, lest they crack it open.

Each Chinese New Year, a girl receives a lucky coin in one of her dumplings. After years of collecting the coins, she loses them and has an unsettling experience during her journey to a new land. Siqi Song’s stop-motion short is a beautifully-animated allegory about leaving home and adjusting to a new culture.

This colorful, challenging, and unique 540-piece jigsaw puzzle from Uncommon Goods features a gradient field of color that wraps around a spherical surface. Its pieces are made from plastic which ensures they hold together firmly, and the finished globe measures 8.66″ in diameter.

While travel is on hold for many of us these days, we rely on videos like this one from Little Big World to keep us inspired. Joerg Daiber takes us on another tilt-shift trip – this time to the Eastern European country of Bulgaria, with its dramatic landscapes, bustling cities, ancient fortresses, and abandoned Soviet monuments.

Injection molding is the process of injecting melted plastics into a mold to create parts. It’s typically reserved for large, industrial machines, but the MicroMolder changes that. It can accept aluminum, 3D-printed SLA, or high-temp cast urethane tooling, producing production-quality parts from pellets.

Backed by the jazzy sounds of Ilhan Ersahin’s Istanbul Sessions‘ track Hurri-Mitanni (Güzel Haber), director Gökalp Gönen’s music video is loaded with eye-catching images, as a series of dancers wander the streets, transforming into surreal and colorful figures with the help of computer graphics tech.

Between the popularity of The Queen’s Gambit and quarantining, there’s no better time to improve your chess game. This chess set from Showcase Plastics has a 12″ x 12″cast acrylic board with LED lighting. It’s available in a choice a variety colors for each side of the board, and includes a set of laser-cut acrylic chess pieces.

Need a getaway from the daily grind? We’ve always wanted a custom-built cabin in the woods to escape the world. This 256-page book by Sofia Borges and Sven Ehmann offers a visual catalog of some of the world’s most bucolic hideouts. It’s a great source of architectural inspiration and relaxing thoughts.

A truncated icosidodecahedron is a polyhedral shape made up of hexagonal, decagonal, and square faces. Maker Michael Mikkelson shows how he made one of the polygonal globes from laser-cut birch plywood, 3D-printed connectors, and 360 screws. Up for the challenge? Head to Instructables for the full build instructions.