Awesome Art & Design

This short dance film by THÉORIZ pulls off some impressive visuals, given the fact that all of its effects were shot in-camera, with no green screen or post-production. They achieved their mixed reality illusion using motion tracking synchronized with real-time projected imagery. Behind the scenes here (turn captions on.)

Latvian gadget maker SlavaTech creates USB flash drives that are encased in authentic vacuum tubes. Each one has an LED that lights up when the drive is plugged in, giving it that warm, vintage glow. They come in 8GB to 256GB storage capacities.

There are plenty of kits out there that let you build a tabletop marble run, but Daniel de Bruin shows you how you can build your own marble track using a spool of picture hanging wire, some solder, and a few household tools. Daniel previously built a room-size marble machine as a demonstration of how economies work.

At first glance, this cubic structure might just look like a tangled mess of wire. But its black cords have actually been strung in such a way to create a seat. We’re not sure it’s the most comfortable place to sit, but it’s definitely a conversation starter and a unique piece of functional art. Measures 30″ x 30″ x 29″ and weighs just 18 lb.

X-Creation likes to put speakers into a kinds of unlikely places. After building a wheelbarrow boombox, he created a stereo sound system by making cutouts in a pair of gas cylinder bottles, and installing speakers, crossovers, wiring, and sound-reactive lighting inside.

That Works take a moment away from smithing video game weapons to craft something more historically accurate. They first make steel by carburizing iron, then forge it into an incredibly deadly spear like the ones used in the 8th and 9th centuries. We were surprised just how effective it is when swung, not just when stabbing it.

Adafruit Industries shares a relatively simple, yet very cool project – a wand which displays a persistence of vision illusion when waved in the air. Naturally, the build uses parts from Adafruit, including DotStar LEDs, and a Feather controller board. Check out the tutorial, files, and code here.

Disproportionately big eyes, a sailor’s outfit, brightly-colored hair… these are but a few of the trademark characteristics of girls in anime. Over at MakeGirlsMoe, machine learning algorithms can generate a seemingly endless set of anime characters, as seen in the video here.

Located in Manchester City, UK, Etihad Stadium is one of the most iconic stadiums in Europe. Model maker FoBIRD took about 20 days to fabricate a miniature replica of the football stadium, using wooden skewers as his construction material. He did a great job capturing the facility’s architectural highlights.

BenQ’s swing-arm LED lamp kicks out a much wider field of light than typical desk lamps. It’s been optimized for on-screen reading, and minimizes glare. You can adjust its brightness and color temperature from 2700K to 5700K, and it has an ambient light sensor. Made from lightweight zinc and aluminum alloy.

At the end of the day, just about any hollow enclosure can serve as the cabinet for a speaker. Whether its acoustic properties are any good is another story, but we’re intrigued by this Bluetooth sound system that X-Creation built into the body of a wheelbarrow. The design certainly makes it easy to move around.

Visual effects artist RubenFro creates imaginative 3D worlds. He starts by capturing a point cloud matrix of locales using 360º cameras, then manipulates and renders the dots using a custom shader in Unity, resulting in incredible, ethereal imagery. This footage was captured in the streets of Hanoi, Vietnam.

MakePlayingCards is showing off a truly unique deck of cards that you can see through. The waterproof plastic cards feature a high-gloss transparent print that produce an embossed effect. Since you can see their values through their backs, you wouldn’t want to play poker with them, but they’re beautiful for cardistry.

Ceramics artist Trevor Foster created this collection of cups which are designed as a reminder to live life to the fullest. The skull-shaped stoneware cups will come in espresso, tea cup, coffee cup, and mug styles, and can be finished in a variety of glazes, from a deep red iron oxide to pleasant pastels.

Filmmaker Fabrice Mathieu is best known for his creative reimaginings of classic movies. But his latest short film is a standalone work about a mysterious afterworld a man encounters after his death. We love the collaged style of the visuals, and the surrealist environments inspired by the art of Marc Giai-Miniet.

Star Wars fans will love these laser-engraved baltic birch coasters, each of which features a planetary destination in a galaxy far, far away. There are nine designs in all, with familiar locales like Hoth and Tatooine, along with less-explored lands like Kashyyyk and Geonosis. Sold in sets of four or more.

Looking for another relaxing activity to pass some time at home? This book is filled with dot-to-dot illustrations of famous locations around the globe. Like the other books in in Thomas Pavitte’s dot-to-dot series, each image is made from exactly 1,000 dots, and comes printed on a tear-out page, suitable for framing.

dP Art Drawing loves to experiment with many different drawing techniques. Recently, he decided to create an image by covering a background with charcoal powder, then revealing its subject using an electric eraser. The second drawing achieves more subtle shading with an ordinary 50 cent eraser though.

Erik Jensen creates art using a non-traditional medium. Instead of paints, pencils, or ink, he creates original works and replicas of famous paintings using computer keys. He dyes the the keys with various colors then painstakingly arranges them into pixel grids. Erik sells originals and prints on his website.

Anyone who lived through the 1990s can tell you that watching movies on videotape was a decidedly lower quality experience than today’s HD and UHD technologies enable. Tom Scott met up with the team from Red Giant to learn how their software can make modern footage look like it was recorded on VHS.

Former Pixar animator Erick Oh’s goofy short film is packed with the silliest array of characters we’ve run into in a while. It follows the story of a naked hot dog on a quest to figure out his who he really is, and the other possibly edible folks he encounters along his journey.

Pop Chart’s double-meaning wall print is a great gift for pie bakers and graph makers. It features 13 yummy kinds of pies, each represented as a pie chart; its ingredients displayed in relative proportions, along with a color-coded legend. Measures 24″ x 18″, unframed.

Want to make your own stop-motion animation? Animator Edu Puertas shows off a few simple tricks using household items like tape, wire, aluminum foil, and pillow stuffing to embellish your creations with, and give them a more finished look.