Awesome Art & Design

There are places where you can get some really nice, professional business cards these days, but if you really want to stand out from the crowd, you need to do something extra special. 3D designer Stian Ervik Wahlvag (aka agepbiz) did just that, and made himself some custom cards that look like packaged toys.

After wowing us with upscaled vintage train footage, Denis Shiryaev takes us on a tour of New York City, circa 1911. Using neural network tech, he injected extra frames to smooth out the choppy movements from this century-old slice of life film. He also boosted its resolution to 4k. We don’t care for the colorization though.

Metal shop Midwest Tungsten makes this elegant desktop conversation piece that includes five 1″ cubes, each made from the element it describes. Includes blocks made from 100% pure copper, aluminum, titanium, iron, and 95% pure tungsten, each engraved with the element’s symbol, electron configuration, and atomic mass.

One of the world’s leading shops for practical visual effects is Wellington, New Zealand’s Weta Workshop. If you need creatures, miniatures, vehicles, weapons, robots, or just about anything else, they’re your guys. Their 2020 reel showcases just a handful of their many incredible visual accomplishments over the years.

Wood Workshop shows off an interesting technique for making a vase with a unique design. The trick is to stack perpendicular layers of dowels, bathe them in resin to hold them together, then turn and carve them as a single unit on a lathe. You’d never know that pattern was there while it’s spinning.

Motion collage artist Erik Winkowski takes a very simple concept and takes it to the extreme. By compositing hundreds of images of a man doing toe-touches into a series of sine wave patterns, he basically creates an ocean made of humans.

A very special gift for sneaker fanatics, Taschen’s 644-page coffee table book tells the storied history of famed footwear brand adidas through images. It features more than 350 pairs of shoes, including rare prototypes, one-of-a-kind originals, and iconic designs throughout the years.

I Like to Make Stuff shares this home renovation project that he worked on with a friend. They turned one long room into two rooms, with the second one hidden behind a wardrobe. It even has a secret switch and a smart lock.

In this clip from Japanese metalsmith Swap Lamp, he shows us how to use an offset disc to mill repeating geometric patterns into a piece of metal. It takes a bit of manual work to re-position the workpiece, but the resulting design is something like a Spirograph would make if it could engrave metal instead of drawing on paper.

Dogs love tennis balls. To celebrate this cherished relationship, architecture firm CallisonRTKL created a very special doghouse, covered with 1,019 tennis balls – each of which can be removed to play with. The 3D-printed doghouse was auctioned off to benefit the SPCA of Texas, but we’d love to see this sold in kit form.

Gareth Smith & Jenny Lee’s enchanting video observes Los Angeles from a new perspective. Watch in awe as dancer-choreographer Jason Chong appears to dance across the city’s overhead power lines. Now before you go calling the power company, the illusion was done using VFX trickery by Smith and Theo Alexopoulos.

ILM takes us behind the scenes of The Mandalorian to see how visual effects tech developed with Epic Games are used to create the series. Rather than shoot on location or in front of a green screen, the series uses a gigantic, wraparound screen to surround actors with digital scenery which can move in sync with a camera.

This adult coloring book is the perfect gift for anyone who enjoys a little wacky weed, or just digs psychedelia. Illustrated by Edwina Mc namee, the book features 25 wild and weird images that are perfect for your most colorful scribbles just staring at. Though they might stare back at you.

Artist Parker Heyl created this ingeniously simple but visually stunning installation work. Inspired by Jacob’s Ladder toys, it mechanically flips dozens of them with wood on one side and mirrors on the other to reflect colorful, ever-changing imagery. More here.

Inspirs Designs‘ pricey, but awesome metal dice are made from GR5 titanium. Each numbered face is highlighted by geometric patterns which connect the pips. Choose from a sandblasted or stonewashed finish.

In the world of LEGO, you can’t just buy stuff that’s already made, right? It’s not official unless you snap some pieces together, like this 12″ ruler that’s made up from official LEGO plates and bricks. After you assemble it, you can measure stuff, or just snap more bricks on top.

(PG-13: Language) The swordsmiths at That Works pay tribute to The Witcher by forging an impressive replica of Geralt’s steel blade. They even folded some meteorite into the steel, giving it an even more mystical appeal. The build even includes a detailed replica of Renfri’s broach attached to its hilt.

Written and directed by Mike Burakoff, the animated music video for The Strokes stripped-down new track “At the Door” has a fantastic look. Inspired by classic anime style, it tells an abstract tale of a boy torn between his reality and a dark alternative universe. From The New Abnormal, due out 4/10/2020.

IKEA teamed up with synth and design house Teenage Engineering to create a limited collection to turn any space into a dance party. It includes modular LED spotlights and dot-matrix lights, speakers and subwoofers, furniture, tiki cups, and even a cajón drum to get the beat going. They also created some 3D-printable hacks.

Luxury electronics maker Bang & Olufsen presents a special edition of its Beoplay A9 living room speaker. Designed in collaboration with pop artist Daniel Arsham, this model takes advantage of its circular shape, replacing the solid color face with an image inspired by the artist’s cratered blue moon globe.

There are a million different Bluetooth speakers out there, so in a quest to create something a little different, woodworker Matt Jordan decided to build one out of a hunk of wood from an apple tree. Watch as he turns the log on his lathe, adding coffee grounds and colorful powder along the way to give the finished piece a dramatic look.

Stop-motion animator Alex Unger of Guldies shared this brief, but well-executed test video in which he demonstrates how he gets jewels out of rocks. In this case, the jewels are simply beads you could buy at any craft store. If only it was this easy to extract precious gems in real life.

Photographer and camera enthusiast Mathieu Stern got his hands on an old Russian camera that dates back to somewhere between 1954 and 1977. When he opened it, he discovered an undeveloped roll of film. He managed to get the photos developed, and attempted to decode the origins of its images.