Awesome Art & Design

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.

Machined from a solid hunk of aluminum or brass, the Flipo Flip offers a unique take on the desktop fidget toy. This metal plaything is designed to feel great in the hand, and is perfectly weighted for flipping, spinning, and manipulation with your fingers. Available in hexagonal and square designs.

Directors and writers seem to get most of the credit when it comes to filmmaking. But there are many other critical players required to create a quality movie, not the least of whom are film editors. Now You See It celebrates the work of Dede Allen and other influential women editors.

To celebrate Honda Australia’s sponsorship of LEGO Masters Australia, the car company commissioned artist Ryan “The Brickman” McNaught to build a detailed model of the famed Mount Panorama racing circuit. The 150,000 brick model took eight builders over 650 hours to construct, measures 11 ft by 6 ft, and has driveable R/C cars.

Jessica Ambats is passionate about both photography and aviation, and she’s quite the talent behind the lens. Her 160-page book features some of the spectacular images she’s captured over the past 15 years, with a unique focus on pilots who own and fly their own jets. Available as a digital download or hardcover.

Filmmaker Seán Doran poured through mountains of images and data captured by the HiRISE camera system on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to create this incredibly detailed black-and-white rendering of the planet’s surface, showing off details of Mars’ cratered and rocky surface like we’ve never seen it before.

Did you know you can shoot macro photos without a macro lens? Another Perspective shows us how you can use kit or zoom lenses with a magnifier lens like the NiSi close-up lens to capture amazing close-up images – in this case using water droplets to refract light.

We’ve seen some pretty sweet tiny houses over the years, but this is the first time we’ve seen a tiny workshop. Artist Stephen Watson built himself a place to work on his projects that measures just 8′ x 6′ (48 square feet.) It’s a great demonstration of what can be done with a small space and a fastidious approach to organization.

NAVA Design’s playful, yet minimal analog wristwatch replaces the hour, minute, and second hands with a floating “H,” “M,” and “S” to indicate the current time, giving it a unique design, while still being legible. It features a stainless steel 39mm case, a mineral glass crystal, and a leather strap.

Inspired by the new Assassin’s Creed game Valhalla, the swordsmiths from That Works created a real-life replica of the badass Viking axe that’s front and center in Boss Logic’s game art. We love the detailing on the engraved logo and weathered finish that makes it look like it’s seen some serious battle action.

Sold back in 2014 for roughly $2.6 million, the Patek Philippe Grandmaster Chime Ref. 5175 is a highly-collectible wristwatch, with just seven of them ever made. This behind the scenes footage takes us inside their factory for a look at the craftsmanship that went into each of these rare and incredibly complicated timepieces.

Ernest Desumbila’s and Sauvage.TV’s short film packs in a whole lot of style, fantastic cinematography, and a cryptic but intriguing series of vignettes about a future civilization where people meet their doom as they face the inevitable in their monstrous and chaotic world.

Over the years, The Hacksmith has made some pretty badass gadgets, often inspired by movie props and weapons. This time, they built themselves an awesome metal gauntlet that looks like Iron Man’s armor, then upgraded it with the ability to slice through metal with a plasma cutter. Every workshop needs one of these.

We’ve seen how pro luthiers make guitars from carbon fiber. Now, Burls Art shows that it’s possible to make one in your own workshop. He starts out by building a styrofoam form to create a mold, then lays in carbon fiber twill and resin form the guitar’s body. A vacuum pump is used to pull the fiber cleanly into the mold.

Geo 101 Designs makes these great wall art pieces for chronicling your journeys. The self-healing nature of the 1/2″ thick cork makes it perfect for pinning locations, tacking up photos from your trips, or even poking in commemorative pins. Comes in 15″h x 23″w and 21″h x 34″w sizes, as well as a giant 8 foot-wide version.

After building himself a rustic keyboard from wood, builder of things The Q decided to make a matching mouse. He started out with a hunk of nice hardwood, copied the shape of a plastic mouse onto it, then got to work cutting it down, sculpting its form, then carving out its center to make room for its mechanism.

After decades of highly-limited fleshtones, Crayola has embraced global diversity with a box of crayons which let kids choose from 24 different skin colors, so they can draw the faces of themselves and all of their friends with greater accuracy than ever. The 32-color box includes colors for hair and eyes as well.