Check Out Awesome Art & Design - Page 7 Of 169 On The Awesomer

Kyle McCabe shows off a neat prototype he put together a few years back – a car brake light that gets wider and brighter as more brake force is applied. A simple, yet smart idea we’d love to see go into production vehicles.

Beyond the Brick shows off Claus-Marc Hahn’s astounding model of the Red Keep from Game of Thrones. He used over 125,000 bricks, and a multiple EV3 servo motors to mechanize the build, so the whole thing turns, its towers move up and down, and their cupolas spin.

Artist Peter Draws creates a wonderful line art illustration using “invisible” ink under a black light. Watching the ink flow off of his glass pen tip into the water is just as mesmerizing as onto the canvas itself. His charming and soothing narration definitely reminds us of Bob Ross.

Joshua Smith makes incredibly detailed scale models based on real world buildings, streets or objects that capture the grit and grime of urban life. He recreates everything including the caked dirt on roofs and walls, fallen leaves and even bits of trash. (Photos: Andrew Beveridge)

ApolloCrowe from Carbide 3D uses one of their Nomad desktop CNC machines to slice up soda cans, and transforms them into parts for a pair of robot sculptures. There’s a lot of handwork involved after the aluminum is cut, but it’s still cool to watch the machine work its magic.

A winner of Android Japan’s Experiments: Object contest. Kosho Tsuboi’s Magic Calendar is a large digital calendar. Tsuboi’s prototype uses a low reflection display, but he hopes that in the future there will be an E-ink display that looks and feels like paper.

Aluminum and brass desktop sculptures which celebrate landmarks around the globe. Creator Konstantin Kolesov says they’re meant as a modern take on travel souvenirs, but we think they’re cool even if you’ve never visited the locations. Each comes with a wood base.

Carpenter Theo Cook shows off just how tightly and precisely two pieces of wood can be joined together, using an ancient Japanese technique called a “sunrise dovetail” joint, which avoids the need for nails or other fasteners.

A thorougly clever design for a sign which can transform from reading “open” to “closed” while fully concealing the letters which are currently not in use. You can download the designs to 3D print your own over on Thingiverse.

Shnatko shows off one of the coolest coffee tables we’ve ever seen. It’s got a matrix of 512 RGB LEDs he’s programmed to display a variety of animations, and proximity sensors which can be used to detect movement and objects, and change the display accordingly.

Lomography’s latest camera has a wide-angle 38mm (21mm equiv) f/4.5 glass lens. It’s designed to offer the sharpest pics you can get with an instant, and can focus down to about a foot. It does multiple exposures, and comes with a remote shutter release and color gels.

Artist and musician Koka Nikoladze builds electromechanical objects which act like analog drum machines, producing unusual beats using bits and pieces of household objects and hardware to produce their rhythms. Be sure to check out Beat Machines No. 2 and No. 3.

A fantastically gruesome replacement for the logs in your gas fireplace or fire pit. Each skull is made from heat-tolerant ceramic and lava granules, layered over a steel structure. They’re not cheap, but they are certainly awesome. Also available in white. (Thanks Doug!)

“The fruits of human imagination freed from the task of imitating nature.” PBS’ The Art Assignment tries its best to chart the origins and define the original elements of surrealism. The movement’s call to find meaning beyond logic and norms will forever be relevant.

Researchers at EPFL looked to the soft wings of insects to create a drone that could solve one of their biggest problems. Its frame is made of 0.2mm fiberglass, which makes it soft and flexible. The rotors attach to the electronics with magnetic joints for added resilience.

Designed with Yves Behar’s Fuseproject, The Frame is an upcoming 4K TV that really looks like a picture frame. When not in use, it enters “Art Mode”, cycling through 100 4K resolution artworks. It also adjusts to ambient light and has a variety of magnetic snap-on bezels.

Those fidget spinner thingies are starting to turn up everywhere, but rather than buy some cheap mass-produced toy, our old pal Engineer BrunS decided to make some of his own. There are few things more satisfying than watching metal shavings go flying as it’s milled.

Joto is a modern take on an X/Y plotter that displays pictures, screenshots, notes and more by drawing them on a whiteboard marker, then erasing them when it’s time for a new image. With support from developers, it can integrate with apps like Twitter, Slack and Spotify.

Vimeo showcases it’s new foray into 360º video with this glorious time-lapse, shot by Christian Mülhauser over the course of 4 months. He used a 4-camera rig to snap over 55,000 photos of the skies over Switzerland to complete the project. Watch in 4K if you can.

Oliver Wilshen and Niall Quinn aka Signal-to-Noise modded an old Roland DXY pen plotter, covering its bed with strips of magnetic tape, and replacing its pen with a playback head. The result – a strange device that can play back bits of audio based on x/y coordinates.

“Like a good movie you get to the end and you still… you don’t want it to stop.” Great Big Story spoke with Adrian Fisher, who has been designing puzzles and mazes for 38 years. He’s come up with over 700 mazes using plants, buildings, water and more.

This awesome stuff is a removable adhesive tape that’s compatible with LEGO, Mega Blocks, KRE-O, and other building bricks, letting you attach blocks pretty much anywhere. You can bend it, cut it, and stick it to everything from your shoes, to your fridge, to other toys.

He’s that ninja! diegator spent about 7 months making a replica of the mask worn by Metal Gear Solid‘s cyborg ninja. The mask has light up parts and its front plates have servos to toggle them open and closed. He’s also planning to make a replica of Gray Fox’s body suit.

Appropriately named metalsmith Alec Steele starts out by welding 31 layers of steel together, then heats and repeatedly hammers them together so many times that he eventually hits one million layers. He later turned the resulting Damascus steel cube into a karambit knife.

Drew Tetz created these awesome business cards which display an animation when played on a turntable under bright light and viewed through a camera, like a phenakistoscope. Be sure to check out Drew’s laser-cut turntable animations too. (Thanks Wayne!)