THE BEST Art & Design

(PG-13: Gore) A coyote miraculously survives an attack by a pack of wolves, but remains haunted by horrible visions of the carnage as he attempts to get back to life. Director Lorenz Wunderle’s award-winning short for YK Animation is a brutal and powerful tale of loss and revenge. This one’s definitely not for the kids.

Motion designer Jonathan Lindgren’s animated short film is a mouth-watering tribute to the art of making sushi. The combination of Lindgren’s sharp visuals, Luke Brown’s sound effects, and staccato voice work by Yoshi Amao, creates the perfect reflection of the precision with which sushi masters ply their craft.

LAMAR+NIK’s music video for the track Manhorse by Husbands uses a technique known as “Scanimation” or “picket-fence animation.” The trick uses several frames of motion interlaced together onto card stock, and then viewed through a transparent bar mask. You can download Scanimations from the video here.

Metamaterials are materials that are defined by their structure, rather than their composition. In 2017, researchers from the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences designed a modular framework which can reconfigure as if by magic, resulting in entirely new structures when directional forces are applied.

While stuck at home with some free time on his hands, car enthusiast Brian King aka AWDcutlass decided to rebuild a full-size GM LS V8 engine inside of a transparent acrylic shell. It’s pretty wild to see all the parts moving inside of it, and it looks especially awesome when he turns on the LED lighting. See Part 1 of the build here.

Being quarantined has forced filmmakers to get really creative working within such constraints. To make the video for Glass Animals‘ track Dreamland, director Colin Read and his production team shipped musician Dave Bayley all of the lighting, camera gear, props, and a 50-page manual for shooting the entire video by himself.

Artist and programmer Cyril Diagne shows of a slick tech demo of an augmented reality app that can snap pictures of real world objects and drop then directly into Adobe Photoshop. Simply point, click, and aim your phone where you want to paste the object. Source code available here.

Jackman Works builds all kinds of interesting things from wood. Here, he shows off a rather interesting way to construct a large decorative vase. He started out by gluing wedges of wood into circles, then carved ripples into the pieces before stacking them like a bunch of offset Pringles.

This series of three jigsaw puzzles come together to form the major anatomical structures of a 5-foot-tall human being. Choose from head, thorax, or abdominal sections, each certified for accuracy by medical illustrator Mesa Schumacher. They make a great gift for biology students, or just anyone interested in science.

Faraway Forge envisions a universe in which battles are fought with light-up katanas. He first forged its two blade sections, tempered them to different finishes, and welded them together. He then sandblasted the handle, and installed electroluminescent tape and wire to give it an awesome red glow.

There’s no question that filmmakers often reference other films in their works. Film scholar Yaron Baruch demonstrates just how true that is for Wes Anderson in this side-by-side comparison of footage from Moonrise Kingdom and Walt Disney’s animated version of Peter Pan.

Alex Dodson of Burned by Design created this awesome grill that looks just like one of the AT-ATs from The Empire Strikes Back. But instead of spending its days in the frigid mountains of Hoth, this Imperial Walker will have a decidedly warmer life as it cooks up hot dogs and hamburgers. It’ll soon be available for order on his website.

Normally, an axe has a steel head and a wooden handle. But in the case of this unusual build by metalsmith Bonn Factory, it’s the other way around. The voiceover is in Russian, but the language of making things is universal.

Nature photographers John Downer Productions flew a realistic, robotic hummingbird deep into a forest packed with hundreds of millions of monarch butterflies. The drone captured amazing footage of the swarm as they awoke from their long winter’s nap in Mexico. From the BBC Series Spy in the Wild.

Patrick Adair usually makes really cool custom rings. But in this video, he uses his skills to create something totally different. Starting out with a bag of shredded currency from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, he cast the former cash in resin to create a unique conversation piece.

This omnipresent stackable chair is known as a “Monobloc,” and it can be found everywhere from suburban backyards to major tourist attractions. What is it about this mundane, yet functional piece of molded plastic that made it so wildly popular? Neo digs into this so-called “context-free object.”

Flagrant Agenda teamed up with artist MILTZ to create this stunning deck of cards inspired by the Japanese Edo period. The court cards include famed shogun and other key figures of the period, Aces have seasonal haiku, and symbology abounds. They come in four versions, and you can add on custom minted coins.

Drinkware company MiiR presents a special edition of their insulated 12oz Camp Cup, with wonderful wraparound art by Kyler Martz that recognizes the feelings of isolation, but solidarity that many of us are going through these days. $5 of each purchase will go to Feeding America’s COVID-19 Response Fund.

Among their various creative pursuits, Melbourne, Australia’s Yell Design makes see-through jigsaw puzzles. This one is particularly outstanding. The Accident is made up of 215 individual pieces, each cut to look like a piece of shattered glass. Their laser-polished edges should mean no sliced fingers either.

If you enjoyed Maths Town’s hypnotic fractal zoom video, here’s another one with a very different aesthetic. Rather than filling our eyeballs with vibrant colors, this one is filled with soothing mathematical structures dipped in shiny gold.

This unique LED light bulb eliminates the need for expensive lighting fixtures. Instead, it’s got an integrated lampshade that distributes a bright, warm area light from its sides. It fits into standard E26 bulb sockets, so you can just pick up a cheap hanging pendant and you’re all set for under 25 bucks.

Woodworker Lignum has made some pretty cool furniture over the years, and this build is among his most intriguing. He created this table by laminating together blocks of wood then scorching it with a torch to give it the look that a fire burnt its insides out. We imagine it smells like a campfire too.

Artist Dave Stencil of CuttingBoredom makes these sweet wood inlaid cutting boards in the shape of of electric guitars. They can be made in cherry, mahogany, or walnut wood, along with contrasting details. Choose from Les Paul, Stratocaster, or acoustic designs.

Carving figures from wood takes time, patience, and skill. But S-Carving went one better, turning a sculpture of a horse into a stop-motion animation, inspired by the work of Eadweard Muybridge. To pull off the simultaneous refinement of the carving and the horse’s gallop must have taken tons of work and planning.

Photographers, just because you’re stuck at home doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to practice your craft. COOPH presents an inspiring series of fun and creative techniques you can use to shoot everyday objects and make them far more visually interesting.

Packed with over 400 pages of artwork and historical artifacts from the Transformers franchise, author Jim Sorenson’s coffee table compendium is sure to delight any Transformers fan. The deluxe edition includes a collector’s box and five ready-to-frame prints.