Awesome Art & Design

We’ve seen an engineer build a robot that can paint giant wall murals. JBV Creative’s robotic painter is decidedly less precise in its approach to creating art, though its abstract paint splatters could still land its entirely randomized works in a modern art museum.

Dust off your CD collection and enjoy the early days of digital music once more. NINM Lab’s portable CD player can transmit audio to modern headsets and speakers via Bluetooth. Its clear cover lets you watch discs spin, while the snap-on cover adds a pair of speakers. It’s also got a magnetic back for sticking it to metal surfaces.

French filmmaker Remi Molettee is known for their wildly inventive generative digital art. In the AI-enabled short film, Symbiosis, Remi transformed dancers the Ebinum Brothers into living, moving tree roots. As their bodies move and intertwine, they appear as wooden surrogates for blood vessels and veins.

AltDynamic created this metal model based on data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. The miniature moonscape replicates the topography of the Linné Crater. Each is CNC-machined from a solid aluminum bar and comes as a 5″ x 5″ or 5″ x 8″ scene, with the larger model available in a blue or red finish.

These magnetic 3″ cube lights can display numbers, letters, animations, and fields of color. There are three kinds to connect: a dot-matrix, a diffused color panel, and a spotlight projector. They can react to games, music, and video, and can be programmed using mobile or desktop apps and are Matter compatible.

We’ve seen knives made from some unusual materials before. Knives Project took a box of metal arc welding electrodes, sanded off the slag layer, then forged them into a block which he hammered, cut, and polished into a knife blade. The finished piece is unique work of art – and incredibly sharp.

It’s a battle for the ages – Lady Liberty vs. the king of the dinosaurs. Ok, maybe not, but we still enjoyed watching how Boylei Hobby Time took two off-the-shelf models that have nothing to do with each other and came up with a creative idea for a diorama – that the statue’s real purpose is to defend our country from monsters.

Flux aims to steal some thunder from the Finalmouse Centerpiece with their own under-keyboard display. Clear maglev keys float above a full HD screen, which can display key shortcuts, colors, patterns, and animations. Its keyframe can be removed for use as a touchscreen, and add-on modules include dials and media buttons.

Give your Mac a visual upgrade with Softorino’s Folder Colorizer. The app lets you combine images, icons, and colors on your Mac’s folders to help identify their contents. It can even suggest relevant images on your system based on the folder’s name. It’s also available as part of Softorino’s 15-app Universal License.

Metal is such a wondrous material because it can be melted down over and over to make new things. In this video from domicscpy7h, they show how they melted some gold charms into an ingot, cast it into a bar, then shaped and refined it into what is basically the world’s smallest functional kitchen knife.

Mortal Kombat’s Kung Lau wears one of the deadliest articles of clothing ever. Not only is his hat made out of metal, but it also has a razor-sharp brim that can slice his opponents into pieces. Koss shows us how he made a real-world replica of the killer hat using a jumbo circular saw blade as a starting point.

Most clothing buttons are made from plastic. But the Tomoi factory in Japan still makes their buttons from a traditional material – seashells. Process X takes us for a tour and a look at the satisfying process of cutting, polishing, drilling, and laser-engraving thousands of shells into buttons each day.

Huion’s displays are created for artists and designers, with built-in pen support for drawing and painting on screen. The 24″ displays come in QHD (2560 x 1440) and 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) resolutions, and are Windows/MacOS compatible. Their battery-free pens have a 5080 LPI resolution, 8192-level pressure, and 60º tilt sensitivity.

King of chocolate Amaury Guichon adds another vehicle to his edible garage by building a scale model of Hyundai’s new Ioniq 6 EV. Amaury’s version is powered by sugar instead of batteries and has zero driving range, but it makes up for it with its delicious flavor and chocolatey aroma.

Artist Guldies spent a year working on their latest short film, a wonderfully weird and inventive stop-motion animation featuring objects that morph between organic and man-made forms. In all, there are more than 4400 individual frames, each composed of hand-sculpted Plastilina and Fimo clay.

(PG-13: Language) Creative writing requires persistence and a willingness to accept failure far more than success. J. Marcelo Borromeo of 101 Things I Learned About Fiction from Film created this video essay on the challenges and rewards of writing, told using footage from the films of Wes Anderson. (Thanks, Rob!)