Awesome Art & Design

Resident Alien is one of our current must-watch TV series. The science fiction comedy features wonderful performances, lots of laughs, and some great visual effects. This behind-the-scenes footage from season three gives us a look at the costumes, makeup, props, and digital VFX that help bring the show to life.

Andymation is known for his creative flipbook animations. He once created a flipbook smaller than a penny, but that wasn’t good enough for Andy, so he made an even smaller one. It took some work to get the camera and lens setup right; then, he got to work drawing each tiny frame with a sharp pencil. After that came the challenge of stacking them.

How do you stop a bear from attacking? Take away his right to bear arms. Adam from North of the Border imagines a way to make a grizzly bear more deadly: by arming it with a high-capacity, rapid-fire weapon. After sculpting the bear’s body, head, feet, and hands, he imparted a fur texture before building a mini minigun and ammo pack.

The Vikings made many interesting weapons, armor, and other battle gear. In this video from metalsmith Freerk Wieringa, he handcrafts a replica of an ancient Viking shield. He starts by hammering its iron center and forging nails. He then cuts wooden planks into a circle and adds canvas, paint, and a rawhide edge before attaching the metal dome.

Photographer Darius Twin is an expert at creating long-exposure images and animations like this one. In this 2-minute tutorial, he shows how to make your own light paintings using manual exposures, a shutter remote, and a focused light source. Be sure to check out his YouTube channel for more of his work.

Stanley Kubrick created cinematic masterpieces like 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange. Before his work in motion pictures, he was a staff photographer for Look magazine. Taschen’s coffee table book Through a Different Lens showcases nearly 300 of his black-and-white stills, which he started shooting in New York City at age 17.

“Some things don’t have words. So we have to be close enough to feel them.” A mother explains to her daughter how she came to understand the way her father expresses his love and support. Julian Curi aka Righteous Robot spent almost three years creating this paper stop-motion short film as a way of coping with his father’s passing.

We love the style and message of this pants-keeper-upper from Arcade Belts. Designed by artist Hanna Eddy, the We Are All Connected belt is illustrated with an abstract landscape in shades of green, blue, brown, and white. Like other Arcade Belts, it’s made from stretchy recycled webbing, and its TSA-friendly buckle glides smoothly through belt loops.

AMC’s promotional Dune 2 popcorn bucket is the subject of many memes. While most of us can’t get our minds out of the gutter, Adam Savage saw the cursed bucket top as an opportunity to build a geeky diorama, turning the bucket back into a proper sandworm by building a foam and resin sand dune and adding a tiny Paul Atreides and a 3D-printed ornithopter.

Here’s an unconventional way to generate random numbers for board games. This unique gaming accessory packs a complete polyhedral dice set onto a zinc alloy wand. Instead of rolling these dice, you spin them, and the number is indicated by a blue pointer. In addition to the six dice on the wand, its spinning base functions as a D20.

Developed by Good Growing, Gus is a ceramic mushroom planter. It houses the fruiting block that contains the root but lets the rest of the mushroom grow freely outside of the container, either on top or at the side. You can stack up to three units to grow multiples shrooms.

A few years back, maker Peter Brown attempted to build an axe with a handle made from gummy bears and resin. Unfortunately, it turned into a sticky mess after sanding. Now he’s back to try it again, but this time he molded his own faux gummies from resin so they’d hold up better to the process.

A vacuum engine moves due to air pressure on one side of its piston and a partial vacuum on the other. The simplest example uses a flame on one side of the piston to create these conditions. W&M Levsha shows the process of making a working miniature of this kind of engine using brass, aluminum, and precision machining techniques.

Pastry artist Amaury Guichon’s Amazon orders don’t come in regular boxes. That’s because everything in his life has to be edible and delicious. Amaury shows how he made a picture-perfect replica of a shipping box with caramelized white chocolate cardboard and filled with layers of caramel, cremeux, mousse, and marshmallow packing peanuts.

The engraved markings on camera control knobs often have painted details to highlight functions. Camera repair technician Ryan Jones of RJ Repairs shows how he restores these details on a vintage Leica by applying Testors enamel model paint using a dental pick and then removing the excess using a Q-tip. It’s so satisfying to see the crisp shapes after cleanup.

We have a hard enough time putting together an off-the-shelf model. Top One Maker is an overachiever and builds all of his models from scratch. In this video, he shows how he took some grey PVC pipe, heated it, and cut and assembled the pieces to form the body and chassis of a remote-controlled Mercedes-Benz AMG G 63 SUV.

This upcoming adventure game from Slow Bros. features artful animations that started as real-world miniatures, transformed into 3D digital models. Players take on the role of Harold Halibut, a resident of a spaceship submerged in an alien ocean on a quest to find a permanent home for his shipmates. Download and play a PC demo of the game on Steam.

Cityframes makes incredibly detailed 3-dimensional maps of cities from around the world. They’re available as small collectible blocks they call Cubes or expansive maps called Frames that cover larger areas. Their bundles let you mix and match different sizes to fill an entire wall. Each map is 3D printed from biodegradable plastic set into a wooden frame.

Inspired by Deadpool & Wolverine, James Raiz, aka TheBoxOfficeArtist, thought it would be a fun challenge to combine the two anti-heroes. But he didn’t stop there. After he warmed up his creative muscles with PoolVerine, he mixed in the genetics of 20 other Marvel characters to create the ultimate Avenger.

Wrenches are utilitarian things so they’re not typically very artful. That’s not the case with this unique wrench, embellished by artist Mihail Kupec with an illustration inspired by Super Mario Bros. He started by sketching his ideas onto paper and the wrench, then used engraving tools and an electrochemical etching process to apply the pattern permanently.

Zenlet’s Memo X is unique gadget that turns any paper you want into removable sticky notes. It combines cutting and adhesive application into a single step. Slide a sheet of paper into its slot, press down, and in a second you’ll have a custom sticky note in one of three sizes. A $4 roll of tape makes about 250 notes.

Maker Neil Paskin returned to his workshop to build another great piece of functional craft. He fabricated this vintage-style industrial chair using hand-cut and bent steel for its legs and support structure and gently curved wood for its back and seat. We love how he made his own plywood from reclaimed floorboards.