Awesome Art & Design

Artist Hongtao Zhou uses 3D printing to produce these wildly innovative works of art. Each one offers up a tactile and dimensional sculpture of a city, sculpted from letters of varying heights, and forming words which describe the locale. Some of his works are even printed on a flexible background so they bend like paper.

We’ve enjoyed some of the hypnotic 3D motion graphics of Andreas Wannerstedt before. See more of his mesmerizing visuals and hear what makes the artist tick in this interview from Insider. Then, check out his complete collection of short loops on Instagram.

Want to apply your creative skills to website design? This series of 10 online courses will give you the boost you need, with beginner level training in HTML5, JavaScript, CSS, and tools like Adobe Photoshop, Illustrator, XD, and Spark. You’ll also get pointers on graphic design techniques along the way. Another bargain in The Awesomer Shop.

Modustrial Maker shows us how to build a sweet looking ceiling pendant lamp that looks like it came from an expensive modern lighting store. The trickiest part was getting the wood pliable enough to bend in two directions without cracking, but the finished piece looks like it was worth the effort.

Christophe Ruge’s LEGO Ideas model of the International Space Station is going into production. This outstanding 864-piece kit is packed with solar arrays, each of which can rotate, along with a dockable Space Shuttle, and a deployable satellite. It also comes with scale astronaut micro-figures for conducting spacewalks. Drops 2/1/20.

FPV drone pilot Nicolas Gaillard was invited to Oahu by Beautiful Destinations to capture aerial footage of some of Hawaii’s most spectacular sights. We think he did a masterful job zooming around the skies and shooting amazing imagery of the island’s natural splendor.

Motorized gimbals are designed to give cameras the steadiest video shots possible. But as the minds at photography channel COOPH point out, they can also be used as a creative tool for capturing some truly unique perspectives – from the whimsical to the sublime.

The iconic LEGO minifig gets maxi-sized by designer Seb_E, who came up with 11″ tall sculpture made from regular-size LEGO bricks. The concept design includes interchangeable faces and t-shirts, and articulated hands, arms, and legs. The jumbo size meta-bricks are a nice touch too. Show your support on LEGO Ideas.

This retro-modern digital clock from NIXT uses old school vacuum fluorescent tubes to display the time, date, and day of week. It comes with eight real VFD tubes, along with colorful LED underlighting. It’s also got GPS-based time sync, alarm, and temperature functions.

Chicago-based Etsy shop Pixelixir makes these adorable 8-bit pixel art flowering plants, perfect for video gamers who lack green thumbs. They’re made from fused beads and each one includes a planter and rocks so they’re ready to display.

John Muntean shows off his amazing LEGO shadow sculptures, each of which looks like an amorphous blob, but casts shadows of three distinct images as it’s rotated through a beam of light. After DragonButterflyJet, be sure to check out KnightMermaidPirateShip and ABC.

A robot takes part in a heist that goes wrong, and ends up in possession of a prize that makes it feel alive. But once it gets a taste for this sensation, it does whatever is necessary to hold onto that precious lifeforce. This graduation film by students of Rubika Valenciennes is simply fantastic on every level.

It’s not the first time someone has built a guitar out of cardboard, but we still think that The Q’s homebrew cardboard Fender Strat is pretty darned awesome. Thanks to an ample coating of epoxy resin, it’s rigid and fully playable.

Game developer Matt Stark posted this mindbender of a video which uses computer graphics trickery to make it look like virtual Polaroid photos are portals to other environments. It’s a wild effect, and could be a very cool gameplay mechanic if incorporated into a video game.

As we’ve seen before, it’s possible to make a weapon out of melted washers. But Hassan Abu-Izmero was challenged by a friend to build a viking axe by welding the washers together, rather than melting them down and forging them. The resulting axe looks super cool, and actually works thanks to its razor-sharp cutting edge.

Designed by Onorio D’Epiro for Mr. Jones Watches, this whimsical timepiece offers up an image of a big blue monster chomping down on the time. As he plucks each hour from the sky, his belly fills up with minutes. If features a stainless steel case and strap, and is waterproof to 5 ATM.

Artist Keisuke Teshima demonstrates his technique for painting beautiful and dramatic images of dragons using sumi-e brushes. What really makes them special is how he uses a large brush loaded with multiple shades to create their bodies with a single stroke.

Photographer Chris Pritchard’s vibrant time-lapse film takes us inside of one of the world’s busiest airports. If you’ve ever traveled through Los Angeles International, you know it’s a sort of organized chaos that moves an incredible 63 million people per year through its terminals and gates. Looks amazing in 4K if your display supports it.

Think you’re good at solving jigsaw puzzles? Check this out. In this time-lapse clip, artist Martin John Callanan painstakingly reconstructs a misprinted British Five Pound note that was shredded into thousands of tiny bits, piecing it back together using a pair of tweezers.

(PG-13: Language) Maker Simone Giertz took a page of the old improv handbook, and asked viewers to toss out ideas of things for her to make out of other things. Her first challenge: make a piece of furniture out of 20,000 matches. Since she built it out of metal, the table still remains after setting it ablaze.

Created by Wired co-founder Jane Metcalfe, Neo.Life: 25 Visions for the Future of Our Species is an upcoming book that imagines how technology and biology might work together to change the future of humankind, featuring insights from scientists, writers, and artists as they dream of what might lie ahead for us.

We last checked in with photographer Noah Kalina back in 2012, who started taking a picture of himself every day back in January 2000. He’s now surpassed 20 years and more than 7200 images along the way. See how his looks have continued to change in this fascinating study of how people age and change over the years.

Best known for his work on movies like Blade Runner and TRON, industrial designer and “visual futurist” Syd Mead was renowned for his ability to extrapolate what might lie ahead for society. This silent clip from DistantMirrors looks back on some of the late artist’s many illustrative works.