Awesome Art & Design

Random Hands had an old anvil he used for blacksmithing tasks. When it was time to replace the rusty old thing, he chopped out a 40-pound chunk from its center and gradually reworked it into Thor’s mighty hammer, Mjölnir. Stick around to the end to see if he’s worthy and can lift it.

AnkerMake claims its upcoming M5 3D printer can run up to five times faster than other FDM printers (250 mm/s) while producing details as small as 0.1 mm. It has a built-in camera that can monitor your print, capture time-lapse videos, and AI tech to notify you of print problems.

Etsy artist Thunktronix makes all kinds of fun pop culture figures cut from sheets of Plexiglass. Fans of the 1970s Schoolhouse Rock educational cartoons will love these designs based on I’m Just a Bill, Interplanet Janet, Verb, Suffragette Sarah, and the Conjunction Junction conductor.

This excerpt from the documentary short The Special Effects of Karel Zeman showcases some of the late Czech filmmaker’s wildly inventive methods for creating movie magic with miniatures, fluids, smoke, forced perspective, and other camera tricks. You can watch the full documentary on YouTube.

If Winnie the Pooh was more like the bear from The Revenant, he might look something like this imposing creation from artist North of the Border. He built this bear from scratch using a wire and foil armature, then sculpted and painted its clay body. Even Heffalumps should not mess with this Pooh Bear’s Hunny pot.

Builder Jairus of All has spent months putting together a working, life-size version of the massive SPNKr rocket launcher from Halo. The video series shows how he designed and built the incredible replica, while the latest video shows off its rotation action and final assembly. We can’t wait to see it fire rockets.

This set of 20 colorful wooden blocks helps kids and adults learn about science and chemistry. 118 of the block faces are printed with the name, symbol, and atomic number of the elements of the periodic table. For fun, see what words you can make by combining elements like “CoBRa” and “BeCoOl.”

For those unfamiliar with ancient Egyptian history, a khopesh is a sickle-shaped sword that evolved from battle axes. Black Beard Projects created this replica of the deadly weapon by forging bronze alloy, pouring it into a sand cast made from a CNC-milled wood form, then grinding and polishing it to a shiny finish.

We’ve seen how colored pencils can be turned into some cool objects, and here’s another one for the collection. Sit back and enjoy as artist Andy Phillip takes hundreds of the pencils, bathes them in resin, and then turns them on his lathe to form a colorful torus. We rather enjoyed watching those resin threads go flying.

LEGO Master Builders plan their projects before snapping together a single brick. This deluxe notebook has gridded and dotted pages for sketching ideas, along with building tips, goal trackers, and LEGO facts to help get your creative juices flowing. Its customizable cover helps set the mood for your idea sessions.

This steampunk chameleon won’t blend into its surroundings, but it does look amazing. The 745-piece stainless steel, iron, and copper model has numerous articulated joints for posing, and its metal parts have a rainbow heat-treated finish. The finished lizard model measures about 10″ long.

Artist WUZU Clay built this miniature scene inspired by the blocky world of Minecraft. They made the underwater ocean temple by cutting and sculpting precise squares of polymer clay, layering them, and then submerging the structure in clear resin. The level of detail in the characters and plants is truly impressive.

This professional-grade lens lets you shoot bloomy and soft vintage-style images using modern interchangeable lens cameras. It offers six different aperture settings from f/36 to f/233 and an 18-36mm variable focal length for fine-tuning your shots. It will be offered with EF,RF,F,Z,A,E,PK,M43, and X mounts.

Today’s movie VFX rely on green screen and CGI, but in silent movie times, neither of those existed. Pedro Cinemaxunga created this fascinating analysis of vintage moviemaking techniques that shows how in-camera effects managed to fake out audiences. We always thought Harold Lloyd was really hanging from that building.

An old-fashioned hourglass is a handy way to count down fixed increments of time. While a traditional hourglass is filled with sand, Engineercly’s 3D-printed version is completely digital, counting time on a pair of LED matrices controlled by an Arduino Nano. He used an accelerometer to track its angle and to direct the LED dots.

Sparkling above the Sunset Strip’s hottest dance floor is a disco ball art installation by the Ian Schrager Company for the underground club Sunset at Edition, at the West Hollywood Edition hotel. The collection of more than 400 varying-sized mirrored balls was made by America’s last disco ball maker, Yolanda Baker.