Awesome Art & Design

In this short video from Posy, he shows off a neat visual effect that takes ordinary footage and highlights solely the parts that move. The resulting footage is artful and reveals aspects of each scene that might otherwise be overlooked. Best of all, Posy shows us how easy it is to replicate the effect yourself.

CGP Grey’s Cortex brand created the Sidekick, a wide-format notepad that works hand-in-hand with your computer workspace. It sits between you and your keyboard and has a large, gridded area for sketching and a narrow space for to-do lists on the right. It’s made with 60 pages of premium Munken Lynx paper with a cover made from recycled coffee cups.

A little while back, Mark Rober engineered a tiny NERF gun using a compliant mechanism. The design has spawned numerous other builds, including this neat-looking blaster Matt Esltea made from wood. It’s not made from a single part like Rober’s NERF weapon, but it’s built with a similarly springy launching mechanism. It’s a beautiful build, but will it work?

Whether or not there was a true rivalry, the media loved to play up the competition between The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. Dog & Rabbit’s brilliantly executed short film plays out this battle through a series of slapstick collages animated using the dueling rock bands’ album art. Terry Gilliam’s Monty Python animations were clearly a source of inspiration.

Paperweights serve one basic function, but these Eye Paperweights by New York artist John Derian do double duty by keeping an eye on you, too. Derian’s 3.5” round glass domes start with reproduced images from his extensive collection of vintage ephemera. Right/left eyes are then hand-cut and decoupaged onto glass.

We’re absolutely wild about things that keep everything in its right place. Jason from Epic Upcycling shows off an amazing build – a custom rack for all of his woodworking tools. It’s an impressive piece of cabinetry, and he made it entirely from scrap wood he harvested from shelving units he used to have in his workshop.

MSCHF’s Gobstomper shoes are designed to be distressed. So, the mischief makers teamed up with Dremel to bundle the shoes with a rotary tool kit. The shoes come in a black-white-blue colorway, ready for you to wear away their four layers for your own personalized look. The limited purchase drawing ends at 2 pm EST 11.29.23.

We love how metal can be used over and over again. After one object has served out its life, it can often be melted down and turned into something new. In this clip by metalsmith Random Hands, he shows us how he took a rusty link from an old piece of ship’s chain and hand-forged it into a beautiful new samurai sword.

Artist M’Brick makes portraits from LEGO bricks. But rather than keeping things simple with 1×1 pixels, he uses a seemingly random assortment of parts to create depth and textures. The originals are hard to come by, but limited-edition prints are for sale at M’Brick’s Art Shop. His Frida Kahlo and Bruce Springsteen portraits are extraordinary.

Keep your Star Wars book collection organized with these AT-AT bookends from MokuShop. Each walker is hand-assembled from layers of laser-cut wood and painted in a shiny metallic silver. As a bonus, they include a Darth Vader figure with a leash for his Imperial pet. Just keep its legs away from Rebel snowspeeders.

Like most metals, steel is an easily recyclable material. In this video from Handyman Restoration, he shows us how he took a pile of steel nail clippers, forged them into a block which he hammered flat to form a fixed blade with a unique damascus pattern. It was interesting to see how he made the wooden handle too.

These unique dice from Aether Objects are made from cassette tapes. Each die has strips of vintage cassette tape preserved forever inside see-through resin. Their embossed numbers are painted with a vibrant yellow inspired by ’80s cassette graphics. Sold in a set of seven dice and packed in a cassette-style storage box.

America loves trucks, and truck people will love these benches with vintage truck tailgates. Texas-based Porras Custom Metal crafts these benches with a steel frame, a quilted bench seat, and cupholders. They make Chevy, Ford, GMC, Dodge, Jeep, and other custom designs. To order, send a DM on Instagram or call their shop at 832-273-2902.

Govee specializes in RGB LED light kits. Their curtain lights can display patterns on a grid of 520 teardrop-shaped light beads. The Govee mobile app includes more than 80 scene presets, music sync, and the ability to upload animated GIFs. They’re also rated IP65 waterproof so that you can use them outside. Chris Maher’s in-depth review shows them in action.

With rents as high as they are, you need to make the most of the space you have. Expand Furniture shows off its Compatto Rotating Office, a versatile piece of furniture that transforms a bedroom into an office. After folding its Murphy bed, it rotates to reveal a wall unit with shelves and a desk. They also make dining table and bookshelf versions.

This interactive installation reminds us of the Master Control Program in TRON. But instead of displaying the face of some omniscient computer, the pixels of FLUX 2023 display images of whoever stands in front of its cameras. The 20-foot-tall display was created by Ksawery Kirklewski, with sound by Arkadiusz Krupiński and tech mgmt. by Jakub Kirklewski.

Artist Kamber Carroll of Kamberland Creations likes his coffee served in a big cup. He also likes it served ON a big cup, so he created this coffee table that looks like a giant version of his mug. He fabricated its main form from styrofoam with a hard outer coating and painted it to look like the real deal. Each cup is hand-sculpted to order.

Filmmaker Quek Shio Chuan is a master at video editing and compositing. In this clip, he shows off his dream bike build, which comes together piece by piece without tools – just his hands and some very precise editing using DaVinci Resolve Studio. He also shared the editing timeline.

ViridianChase created this unique gaming computer that looks like a tank. Its case is built from metal with a digital camo pattern and tempered glass windows. It has 13 LED-lit fans, six of which simulate tread wheels. In addition to its fans, it packs NZXT Kraken 360X water cooling, an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU, and an ASUS STRIX 6700XT graphics card.

Members of the Tesla Club Finland parked their cars and put on a synchronized light show using their vehicles’ headlights and taillights. In all, 687 of the electric vehicles were on hand, and automotive channel Harri Salo posted this aerial footage of the festivities. The light show was put together by Simon Pollock. Watch the ground view here. (Thanks, Olli!)

This unique jigsaw puzzle from In a Flash Laser is made from a 5″ x 5″ sheet of 304 stainless steel, laser-cut into 20 pieces. With no images on the pieces, it’s trickier to solve than it might look. You can also have it custom-etched with an image of your choice for an added charge.

This wonderfully soothing video provides a close-up look at some of the teensy scale model submarines, boats, and ships floating in the water tanks at Miniatur Wunderland. If you’re ever fortunate enough to be in Hamburg, Germany, you must visit this incredible tiny world.

Take a look inside the Vincent Bach factory, where they handcraft premium brass instruments. In this video, you’ll see craftspeople transform stamped sheets of brass into a variety of precision trumpets for professional musicians. Along the way, you’ll learn about how a trumpet works, too.