Awesome Art & Design

Maker Jimmy Diresta wanted a place to hide some of his whiskey, so he set about crafting a book with cutouts that can hold a couple of bottles of Bulleit (and a single glass.) Most of the work was performed by slicing through the book’s pages with a laser cutter. Of course, laser cutting paper is not done without the occasional fire.

Phil is a skeleton. He quickly rose to fame on the big screen as a stop-motion superstar. Then, modern effects put him out of business. Michael Shanks’ (aka “timtimfed“) charming short film is a fun blend of live-action, animation, and VFX, and a loving tribute to the great Ray Harryhausen. Behind the scenes here.

M.N. Projects shows off a nifty little weapon he machined from aluminum. It has a set of hinged arms which are attached to springs that store up energy when the bow is drawn back. We certainly wouldn’t want to catch one of those metal-tipped arrows in an eyeball.

Traveler Arkady Fiedler and photographer Kamil Piechowiak present 3-minutes of footage their epic 6000-mile journey from Copenhagen to the Arctic Circle to Finland. From the Aurora Borealis to whiteout snowstorms, the images they captured along the way are spectacular. The full documentary series is due out 9.2020.

This stainless steel tool helps draw circles, arcs, and straight lines, and can also measure. It combines a protractor, straight edge, T-square and compass functions, and can measure in inches, centimeters, picas, and pixels. It packs neatly in your wallet alongside your credit cards.

William Crook’s 23-second animated clip might be short, but it’s an impressive and clever bit of stop-motion. The premise is simple, but effective: imitate the action of striking, lighting, and burning a match using nothing but a twig and some appropriately colorful leaves.

Blackhand typically uses his X-Acto knife to build stuff out of cardboard. But in this clip, he used his sharp hobby blade to cut out silhouettes from 1400 pieces of paper, transforming footage of a dancer’s moves into a stop-motion animation. Original video here.

Black Beard Projects shows off a nifty kind of material that can be used to make handles and grips on tools. By stacking together thin layers of cork and soaking them with resin, he produced a sturdy and unique stock that can be used sculpted and sanded like a block of wood.

After building himself an F1 car out of soda cans, builder The Q decided to make himself another cool, but highly-impractical vehicle. This time, he spent over 200 hours building a bicycle entirely out of wood and glue – including the frame, wheels, chain, seat and pedals.

Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite was arguably the best movie of 2019, blending tense storytelling, moody cinematography, social commentary, and the darkest of humor. Great Big Story explains how the house at the center of its story never really existed, and was entirely created as a series of sets by Production Designer Ha-Jun Lee.

Sunlife Drawing’s unique coloring books offer a different kind of relaxation for your mind. Rather than traditional illustrations to color in, each page is filled with black and white lineart which result in halftones line and dot patterns when filled in.

Photographer Jens Heidler of Another Perspective is always showing off great ideas for shooting your own creative photos. In this clip, he reveals some simple tricks you can do using sparklers and a power drill to bring light, energy, and motion to images.

After digging up a rusty old nail from his yard, maker Bobby Duke transformed the nasty looking old piece of scrap metal into a beautiful miniature sword that’s fit for a tiny warrior. Along the way, he made a custom forge from a paint can, some concrete, and blow torches.

“It’s like a 3D printer, but in 2D!” Plotters have been around for decades, providing a unique way to output vector-based drawings. Electronics tinkerer Mixtela took some time to play around with the tech, and shows how they’re still a fun and unique way of creating art. You can check out his nifty PlotterFun app here.

Architect Mohamed Radwan took home a 2020 DNA Paris Design Award for his concept for a new kind of cubicle. Each of his hexagonal pods would have an airtight acrylic door and skylight, along with its own ventilation and air filtration system, reducing the likelihood of spreading germs within an office, while improving privacy.

Every time we see a firefly, childhood memories come flooding back of warm Summer nights in our backyard. Discover Life in America (DLiA) and photographer Radim Schreiber teamed up to educate us about these luminescent beetles, then wow us with soothing imagery from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Woodworker James Garwood shows off the time-consuming process of laminating, assembling, and turning numerous pieces of cherry and dyed-blue tulip veneer to create an exquisite custom fountain pen. While they’re not all quite this fancy, you can purchase one of his handmade pens from James’ website.

Puppeteer Barnaby Dixon is an expert at creating simple characters with tremendous expressiveness. His latest creation is a tiny, glow-in-the-dark fish puppet that has a wonderfully fluid movement, despite being controlled by just two simple rods. It even can be operated underwater.

David Klavins builds musical instruments unlike any other. Combining design elements from upright and concert grand pianos, he builds modern, vertically-oriented instruments, including the world’s tallest piano, measuring 15 feet tall. Great Big Story went inside of Klavins’ workshop for a demo of these impressive pianos.

Back in 2017, artist Federico Tobon of wolfCat Workshop built a series of 29 tiny kinetic sculptures from wood, wire, and paper, each of which was brought to life by simply turning a crank. There are lots of nifty designs, but the walking man and the creature with spinning eyes at the end are our faves.

Film Radar made this great video about wardrobe design in film and TV. Good costume designers inhabit the minds of both the characters and the director. In terms of production, costumes are often custom made, even for extras, and may have multiple replicas.

We’ve always wanted one of those fancy Eames lounge chairs, but the real ones are just too expensive. Wood Design shows us how it’s possible to build a similar piece of furniture yourself, with enough time, effort, and skill. We prefer the original’s swivel base, but this version looks more comfy, and is still an impressive build.

Kuma Films is known for photographing people as they show off their various talents. Often, the footage is captured in slow-motion, so for fun, they decided to run some of the footage in reverse, resulting in a surreal and captivating compilation of backwards scenes.