Awesome Art & Design

Outfitter Bradley Mountain teamed up with 1924us and Art of Play to create this playing card deck that features camping inspired imagery, including hand-drawn face cards, letters, numbers, and suits, along with instructions on how to stay alive using only a playing card. This red version is the 4th in the series of limited-edition decks.

Electronics geeks would love to have a table like the one that New Yorkshire Workshop made. Watch as the artist painstakingly applies gold leaf to produce jumbo metal circuit board traces on a dyed-blue maple veneer, then gives it a nice shiny clear coat. Watch how he made the twisted “wire” copper legs here.

This playful pair of books from Flipboku is packed with fun drawing activities. The first book, Dots, has dot-to-dot puzzles which form six professionally-illustrated cartoon animations when complete. The second book, Lines, offers up six brain-bending animated optical illusions.

These laser-cut lamps feature designs inspired by the neon signs of Hong Kong. Not only are the lamps cool to look at, but they cast awesome shadows onto your walls and ceiling. They’ll be made in two materials, with the pricey copper version offering the sharpest images, while the acrylic version is far more economical.

Throw me the idol, I throw you the brick! BenBuildsLego’s sweet design celebrates the three original Indiana Jones movies. The 650-piece set features dioramas of The Temple of Doom, The Well of Souls, and Temple of the Sun, each a location where Indy recovered a rare historical artifact. Show your support on LEGO Ideas.

These clever 3D-printed lamps look their light bulb has been shattered. Designed by Joakim Christoffersson for Gässling, they appear to have been dropped on the floor, splintered by a bullet, or smashed into a wall. Each is powered by a 6W LED bulb, and measures about 5.5″ across – roughly twice the size of a standard A19 bulb.

We’ve seen more than our share of time-lapse landscape videos, but this is the first one we’ve seen that was shot using an infrared camera. The Phlog used a modified Canon EOS 750D to capture these otherworldly images in stunning 8k resolution.

Kris Temmerman wanted to learn how to TIG weld. He ended up doing way more than that. Watch him create a small motorized six-wheeled vehicle that resembles the Mars rover (with a seat). It has an aluminum body, six-wheel drive, and four-wheel steering.

Help your keys go meta with this amusing oversized key keychain. It won’t unlock anything, but will keep your other keys in check. Studio Cult’s laughably large key is made from a lightweight goldtone metal, and measures 4″ in length.

Do you have a dirty sidewalk or driveway at your house? Pressure washing is a great way to get the grime off. Craig “Turnah81” Turner shows us how to use brick stencils to make a little bit of temporary art while hosing off his parking pad. Also, we love the Aussie pronunciation of “algae.”

A few years back, we watched an artist craft a beautiful replica of an 8-ball from wood. Now, watch as Oregon woodworker Carl Jacobsen creates a shell for a Magic 8-ball toy, with a cool basketweave pattern on its exterior. Also, we always thought the whole toy was filled with liquid, not just a cylinder in its middle.

From living rooms on wheels, to 3D printed humans, to transporter beams, to robotic construction workers, Animator Loek Vugs’ short film muses on some of the likely and unlikely technologies which lie ahead for future of humanity.

Velcro is an incredibly useful product. But it’s not exactly the easiest product to make visually interesting. The guys at London’s XK Studio made this happen by creating digital macro images of a burr plant which served as the inspiration for the brilliant simplicity of Velcro’s hook-and-loop design.

James Raiz aka TheBoxOfficeArtist loves to draw complicated scenes featuring lots and lots of characters. In this clip, he meticulously illustrated 100 versions of The Dark Knight as seen in his many different guises over the years. Join James’ Discord community for a chance to win a print of the finished image.

We only recently came across this ESMA animated film from 2016, but it’s too good not to share. The award-winning CGI short follows the story of the guardians of a sand castle, as they make their last stand against a terrifying enemy.

Artist Thomas Blanchard follows up his stunning short film The Other Side with a more singular effort, filling our screens with colorful planetary bodies and galaxies. Like his other works, there’s no CGI here – the images you see are made entirely from paint, oil, inks, and soap.

Using neural network tech, Denis Shiryaev was able to take some very early film footage, and upconvert it to display at 60 frames per second. The original Lumière Brothers film, Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat dates back to 1896. There are definitely some strange artifacts, but it’s unusual to see such old footage moving so smoothly.

Senko Hanabi fireworks are a traditional Japanese form of pyrotechnics that uses only a tiny bit of combustible powder to get started, then transforms through various stages to produce a sparkler effect. NightHawkInLight scored a rare lesson on how to make them at the Tsutsui Tokimasa fireworks company. Money shot at 14:18.

If you’ve ever wondered just how much bigger the Avengers tower was relative to Ant-Man’s mobile lab, this video answers that question and many more. MetaBall Studios‘ compares structures from movies, TV, and video games and puts them into perspective. We always suspected the Tyrell Corporation was enormous.

Andymation spent over 35 days over the course of 3 months creating this insanely-thick flipbook. The 658-page anime-style sequence only takes about 50 seconds to watch, but it’s a serious testament to the artist’s illustration skill and dedication. Skip to 15:07 for the money shot.

Motion designer Agustín Vidal Saavedra takes us through the process of digitally manipulating images from 15th century church ceilings into a trippy moving image using Adobe After Effects. Find more of his wildly inventive animations on Behance and Instagram.

Most furniture is made primarily from wood or metal, but HomeMadeModern’s funky, angular chair is crafted from steel-reinforced concrete. He made the chair’s mold using strips of melamine, hot-glued, and sealed with silicone caulk. By filling the inner core with foam insulation, he was able to dramatically reduce its weight.

Designer VisualDon has created all kinds of wonderful video eye candy, including this emotive and calming image of an astronaut on an endless walk along the lunar surface as the Earth hangs in the distance. The video is available for free download for non-commercial use, or can be licensed for commercial use.