Awesome Art & Design

Jossie Malis‘ animated short delves into a trio of stranger-than-fiction true stories about incredible coincidences which make you wonder if there really is some higher power playing games with humans like pawns on a chess board. (Thanks Rob!)

Russian Papercraft artists Northpoly created this larger-than-life bust of Arnold Schwarzenegger entirely from cardboard. The image is based on his appearance in Red Heat, and was displayed at the 2019 Synergy Global Forum, where Ahnold was a guest speaker. You can buy templates of Northpoly’s other sculptures over on Etsy.

When he’s not making glowing katanas, Keaton Goddard of Faraway Forge likes to create new tools and weapons by recycling stuff from the junkyard. Watch as he makes a beautiful rapier from a rusty old leaf spring, with a hilt crafted from bent bicycle sprockets, oak, and a trailer towing ball.

LEGO builder Iyan Ha created this detailed model of an ancient Roman warship. Other than the fabric sails and capes, dyed ropes, and custom stickers, every part is an off-the shelf LEGO brick. We love the colorful shields along the sides of the ship, and the armor on the minifigs. Show your support for the design on LEGO Ideas.

Put the moon in the palm of your hand with Shire Post Mint’s lovely lunar memento. Each coin features engraved detail of the near and far sides of the moon, struck into solid 999 fine silver. Available in 1″ (.25 troy oz.) and 1.5″ (1 troy oz.) sizes. Why can’t real currency look this awesome?

This short video proves just how universal the language of design is. Despite being entirely in Japanese, motion designer Ritsuko Nomura’s clip demonstrates the importance of using layouts, scale, and color to bring structure and legibility to information, regardless of language. From the NHK educational TV show Design Ah!

Two strangers, each living with a lazy eye, find themselves locked away together in total darkness for 10 days as part of an experimental treatment. As they descend into the dark, madness takes hold. Tom Hardiman and Chris Cornwell’s short film is packed with auditory and visual surprises – and inspired by an actual experiment.

Building an actual house requires lots of different skills. OUROBOROS ARQ shows how you can apply the same experience and materials to the creation of a miniature dwelling, as they lay down a concrete and rebar foundation, erect beams and walls, lay bricks and install a tile roof for their literally tiny house.

Artist Ned Kahn created this kinetic art installation on the exterior of a parking garage in Clayton, Missouri. Its thousands of tiles each flap in the wind, creating an endless series of patterns which reveal the movement of air currents. The artist’s many works are each inspired by wind, fire, water, sand, or fog.

(PG-13) Set 100 years in the future, The Seed of Juna envisions a post-apocalyptic world where Earth has fallen to religious fanatics. After being killed on Earth, a young rebel awakens on a strange planet only to face a whole new threat. Filmmaker Álvaro García Martínez envisions his CGI science fiction epic as a multipart series.

There have been lots of visual mods to Grand Theft Auto V since it was released back in 2013, but this one takes the cake. By upgrading shaders, textures, models, and rendering techniques, NaturalVision Evolved aims to revamp the game to take advantage of modern graphics chipsets. You can support the project on Patreon.

There’s a legend that says China’s Jade Emperor asked the animals of the zodiac to race across the country to decide their order. Filmmaker Law Chen created a bold, modern interpretation of this story in a Chinese New Year campaign for ICBC, but subsequently released it as a reminder to wear masks to protect our safety.

Builder Pask Makes shows off a technique based on ancient Japanese woodworking. He starts off by laminating boards of scrap wood, slicing them into strips, then assembling them side-by-side to create a pattern. Once thoroughly glued into place, he shaves off layers with a plane and irons them to create beautiful veneers.

Drop by The Awesomer Shop and save 10% on these flat-pack wood models from UGears. Choose from a working safe, a steam locomotive, treasure box, vintage grand prix car, butterfly, or monowheel, each offering a challenging glue-free build and working mechanisms.

Woodburning isn’t a unique craft, but artist Hye Sea of Magnify the Sun executes it differently than others. Rather than electric tools, she uses a variety of magnifying lenses to focus bright sunlight onto a plywood canvas. If you’re interested in having a portrait commissioned, you can make an inquiry here.

Want an easy way to draw perfect circles? This handy art tool features a rotating interior disc with pre-marked locations for circles up to 6″ in diameter. Simply place your pen or pencil into one of the holes, and spin. The exterior markings double as a 360º protractor, so you can easily draw precise arcs too.

Artist Trish Andersen grew up in Dalton, Georgia, aka The Carpet Capital of the World, so it’s no coincidence yarn is her primary medium. She uses an electric tufting gun to “paint” abstract images onto a backing fabric. Art Insider shows us a bit of her technique, which is sort of like using a giant, handheld sewing machine.

Filmmaker Jonas Høholt is an expert at capturing images of nature and the passage of time. In his short time-lapse film, he points his camera lens at locations in the beautiful and serene Jutland Peninsula in Denmark to observe the changing of the seasons.

You’d think that cardboard wouldn’t be a great homebuilding material, but Fiction Factory says their tiny cardboard house is durable enough for permanent structures. The tiny house is assembled using layers of premium “goldboard” which is wrapped around a special mold, then covered with glue, a protective film, and wooden slats.

If there’s one thing that’s consistent across the globe these days, it’s that kids are in need of things to do at home. To help with this mission, IKEA Russia has offered up a series of six fun DIY furniture forts which can be built using various IKEA furniture and accessories. We might just have to make that octopus chandelier.

South Korea-based creative studio d’strict created this cool public art display that uses a series of wrap-around screens to make it look like ocean waves contained in a giant box. Of course it helped that they had a massive set of ultra high-def LED displays built by Samsung at Seoul’s equivalent of Times Square.

Bladesmith shurap loves to make damascus from all kinds of unusual objects. In this case, he managed to get his hands on a bunch of rusty, ancient blades that date back as far as 1100 years to the Kievan Rus era. He then smooshed them down into one elegant new weapon. Historians and archaeologists look away.

Mom and dad always told you not to play with your food. But we think they’d make an exception for these connectors that let you build structures using dry spaghetti. They come in 3-sided and 4-sided versions, in packages of 100 connectors each. Just don’t boil your noodles if you care about structural integrity.