Awesome Art & Design

CG artist pwnisher called on 3D artists again, challenging them to create renders based on a theme and a template. The goal this time: create a short scene featuring the most epic boss battle they could dream up. This video compiles the top 100 pieces of eye candy out of 2,800 submissions, with music by Disasterpiece. We want to play all of these games now.

We’d probably slice a finger whittling a pencil with an X-Acto knife. Artist Bobby Duke gave that a try before moving on to a rotary tool. He then proceeded to carve a snake wrapped around the pencil’s lead. After a bit of precision painting and some silly sound effects, the tiny artwork was complete.

The Polaroid I-2 represents a major leap over prior instant cameras. It’s Polaroid’s first analog camera with manual controls. The camera has shutter speeds from 1/250 to 30 seconds and apertures from f/8 to f/64, plus a long-exposure bulb mode. It’s also got automatic and multiple exposure modes and a sharp 98mm f/8 lens with LiDAR autofocusing.

Artist Ed Fairburn creates incredible portraits by drawing intricate crosshatch patterns on maps. His precision penmanship works hand-in-hand with the underlying map lines to produce outlines of his subjects and explores the relationship between people and the world around us. You can find prints and originals of Ed’s work on his website.

There are some pretty cool backpacks on the market with LED screens, but this one from Yihong Technology works its visual magic differently. It uses a spinning fan blade with 510 flickering LEDs that display moving images using a persistence of vision illusion. It’s just for advertising and not carrying things, though.

Swiss artist Simon Berger creates portraits by tapping sheets of glass with a hammer. While many of his pieces are 2-dimensional, he has created some amazing 3-dimensional works by cracking multiple layers and then stacking them together into a cube. His glass skulls are truly amazing to behold.

How colors work can be quite fascinating – especially when it comes to light and shadow. Instagrammer art.pete.repeat offers a simple yet effective demonstration of how additive colors behave by aiming red, green, and blue flashlights at card stock. Pete posted another video explaining the setup. (Thanks, Rob!)

YaramountTube has a very special artistic talent. When he’s not working his construction job, he spends his time carving intricate architectural sculptures out of plaster. His friend suggested that he posted his work online, and if this first video is any indication, we can look forward to many more amazing creations.

The Galactic Senate scenes in the Star Wars prequels weren’t always the most captivating, but the Senate chamber was an impressive set piece. A team of LEGO builders created this incredible Minifig-scale replica of the chamber. Christoph, Tobias, Hendrik, René, and Markus built the main structure, while attendees of a LEGO conference each made a pod.

Love colors and design? Hues and Cues is a great party game that challenges you to pinpoint a specific color based on one- or two-word clues from other players. The closer you get to guessing the exact color from the 480-hue grid, the more points you earn. It’s a fun, family-friendly game for 3 to 10 players.

Despite advancements in 3D visualization tech, architects sometimes still need to show physical models of buildings. MonsterKook is an expert at making this type of miniature, and his YouTube channel is filled with these tiny houses, including this impressive creation featuring structural walls he made by filling foamboard forms with cement.

Robotime’s ROKR division is showing off a flat-pack wood model that lets you build a replica of a Thompson M1928 submachine gun. The finished gun not only looks like the real deal, but it rapidly fires lightweight projectiles using a rubber band and spring firing mechanism. It’s even got a removable magazine.

We bet you’ve never seen a chair like this. This amazing work of functional art features a back and seat made from 210 stainless steel spheres. Both the spheres and tubular steel frame have a shiny chrome finish to reflect the surrounding environment. Designed and fabricated to order by Shepherd Studio.

When pastry artist Amaury Guichon was approached by Bailey’s to build a chocolate bar, he knew right away that they were looking for something more than a Hershey’s with almonds. What Amaury built is extraordinary – a life-size cocktail bar with a realistic woodgrain base, a marble top, three barstools, and a full set of barware.

Some things defy description, like these awesome slippers based on an indescribable art installation of the surreal “Glitzy Snurtle” street sweeper at Meow Wolf’s indescribably cool Convergence Station in Denver. Let it suffice to say that Snurtle Slippers keep your feet cozy and dust your floors as you shuffle around your domestic multiverse.

We don’t use pencils nearly as much as we used to, but we still enjoy sketching and drawing with a real-world writing instrument and not just on our iPad screen. This YouTube playlist of short videos from Rescue & Restore shows off a few very different antique pencil sharpener designs that date from the 1880s to the 1930s. Which is your favorite?

The latest creation from the talented artists of AltDynamic puts a new spin on the machinist’s practice object known as a Swiss cube. Their version twists the cube in the middle and will have you wondering how they engineered such a thing. The palm-sized cube is CNC machined from solid aluminum in the USA, and comes in raw metal or anodized colors.

Thanks to modern technology, low-voltage, electronically-controlled lighting can be integrated into all kinds of things. Immerge Interactive shows off a project they did where they embedded colorful LED illumination into a Fender Telecaster guitar. It works with their software to display patterns in sync with the music.

Lomography’s lo-fi analog camera captures 35mm panoramas with a creamy, dreamy aesthetic. Its unique lens can be injected with water-based liquids to create a variety of in-camera effects. It includes four interchangeable aperture plates and exposes panoramic images all the way onto the film’s sprockets.

Video game consoles come from the factory in opaque plastic cases. BitHead1000 gives consoles ultimate upgrade by creating custom see-through enclosures. In addition to the PS1 here, he’s built a see-through PS2, a PS4, NES, and a Sega Genesis. The videos call them glass, but we’re pretty sure they’re acrylic.

Mandalorian armor is made from a rare metal known as Beskar. Since we can’t get Beskar here on Earth, artist Bobby White created this tiny version of Mando’s helmet out of other precious metals and adorned it with diamonds and black rhodium. He used 3D modeling software to produce castings, then refined the pieces by hand.

This illuminated wall art helps create a calm and relaxing environment. It features a multi-layered geometric design laser-cut from thin sheets of wood fiberboard. The colorful LED edge lighting really makes the patterns pop and can be set to change colors. Available in 23.2″ H x 19.3″ W and 26.4″ H x 23.2″ W sizes.

A typical cabinet might be made from 15 or 20 pieces of wood. Blacktail Studio built this incredible-looking cabinet from about 20 times that many pieces. He started with 300 walnut wood blocks, which he stacked, glued, clamped, and shaped into a unique work of functional art. It took a lot of trial and error to figure out the best way to carve and smooth it.