Art & Design

Artist Dito von Tease turned classical portraits into selfies, alluding to the opposite backgrounds of the commissioned portrait and the digital self-portrait. The former was a privilege of the rich, while the latter is available to anyone with a phone.

A simple, but fascinating construction that demonstrates the energy transfer that occurs when two pendulums are placed along the same string. Each one almost completely stops as its momentum moves to the other one like some kind of a seductive dance. (Thanks Kate!)

Alvaro Gracia Montoya of MetaBallStudios likes to demonstrate the relative sizes of various objects. In their latest video, they start out with a 1.4″ tall paleolithic statue all the way up to India’s colossal 787 foot-tall Statue of Unity. And here we thought Mount Rushmore was huge.

Film Radar made this great video about wardrobe design in film and TV. Good costume designers inhabit the minds of both the characters and the director. In terms of production, costumes are often custom made, even for extras, and may have multiple replicas.

Hover Helmets makes officially licensed half-scale football helmets featuring NFL and NCAA football teams. The helmets have a base that makes them levitate and rotate indefinitely, and LEDs to light up the helmet. Some teams are on sale at Touch of Modern until 1/1/19.

Teenager Caleb Watson built one of the best LEGO displays we’ve ever seen. It’s a kinetic diorama of the opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. It breaks the scene down into multiple segments, including fetching the idol, and the boulder rolling after Indiana Jones.

Animator Jan Elsner’s short film ÖBST envisions how nature’s sweet treats might move around if they were more like animals. The CG animation was achieved without keyframing, and instead relied on physics simulations and procedural noise functions.

Lawless Bikes makes kids’ wooden balance bicycles designed to look like cafe racers. There are two designs, one inspired by BMW bikes and one inspired by Triumph bikes. Unfortunately, they are made to order only for clients in South Africa as of this writing.

Students from the University of Washington created a technique that can create 3D animation out of a single photo. Called Photo Wake-Up, it also lets the user change the pose of the person. Viewing the effect in virtual or augmented reality is also possible.

Designer Porky Hefer makes large chairs with whimsical animal designs. His latest collection features endangered species such as the polar bear, a blue whale and a great white shark, and are made of eco-friendly or recycled materials.

Morgan of Seed Animation Studio gives us all the finger… actually lots of them, in this strange and hypnotic short film which turns human digits into some really unusual mechanical contraptions. At a certain point, they all started looking like hot dogs to us.

Artist Oscar López Rocha aka LOROCROM created this amazing short film which combines live-action backgrounds with CGI elements. The way the virtual light bulbs and tubes illuminate the natural surroundings is amazing. The track is Serotonin Diode by BLÆRG.

This resin-based 3D printer builds up layers of liquid polymer for super smooth models. What makes it truly special is its 13.3″ LCD panel, which allows for builds as large as 29.2 x 16.5 x 40 cm (11.5 x 6.5 x 15.75″). It’s also available with dual 5.5″ panels for printing two models at once.

Using a professional full-color 3D printer and taking advantage of the stairstepped surfaces of voxels, Make Anything was able to create a sweet model of a human skull that appears to change colors when viewed from different angles. Download the model here.

“Good design is as little design as possible.” The revised edition of legendary product designer Dieter Rams’ previously sold out book. In Less But Better, Rams talks about his “ideas, criteria and methods”, and how he came up with his now famous principles for good design.

While most mirrors today are made in big factories, UK ornamental glass artist David Smith shows us how to do it the old school way. It’s done by taking a clean sheet of glass, pouring silver nitrite on one side, then carefully moving it to evenly coat its surface.

Royal Enfield commissioned Bandit9 to make a bike based on the former’s Continental GT. The result is the Arthur, a graceful sci-fi creation. It features a custom frame, tank, rear cowl, handlebar, exhaust, swingarm and more. Limited to 9 units.

Like to build structures with LEGO? Brick expert Alice Finch’s book is packed with over 1000 ideas for creating detailed brickwork, windows, columns, staircases, and lots of other architectural details for your models.

Ready to see something really amazing? Watch as artist Sara Sandoval takes a roll of “Hello My Name Is” stickers, and doodles what looks like a random squiggle onto each one. But as it all comes together, the name badges reveal a detailed portrait of Slim Shady himself.

Jackman Works walks us through the complex process of making wooden coasters with a cool diamond pattern. He starts out with sticks of old pallet wood, stacks and laminates them with glue, cuts them on the diagonal, then slices, CNC carves circles, and finishes each one.

One of the great things about vinyl records is that they’re display worthy. Record Props gives you a variety of options to show off your records and their sleeves. You can set the sleeve on a tabletop, or hang the record and its sleeve on your wall.

Bevin Bells makes trip gongs that look and work just like the ones used in boxing arenas, mines, and stock exchanges. They’re mechanical so they don’t need electricity to work. They’re available as brass or as steel with a black powder coat.

Like larger mosaics, micromosaics are images made up of numerous small colored pieces. But these are made using tweezers to lay in tiny pieces of glass. They look like paintings from any distance. The Victoria and Albert Museum shares footage of the painstaking process.

Bench vises are typically made from metal. But John Heisz of I Build It decided to see if he could make a fully-functional version of the ubiquitous shop tool from the material it’s typically used to hold in place. Build guide here.

Based on the same concept as the Pyro Board, The Blazing Beats is a two-axis version of a Rubens’ Tube, a device which emits variable heights of flame based on sound waves traveling through it. The result is a gas fireplace that dances to the beat of your music.

The My Cinema Lightbox not only looks like a marquee, it’s also fit for any occasion thanks to its RGB LED backlights. You can make it flash in a variety of colors or stick to one, including white. It comes in three sizes and can be powered via USB or battery.

How to Make Everything decided to how many U.S. one cent coins it would take to make a copper sword. He first had to separate older and newer pennies to get the ones that are mostly copper, then set about the task. We’d love to see the blade patina over time.

Builder Tom Stanton attached a long vertical LED light bar to his drone, and managed to fly it horizontally to capture some cool long-exposure images. His design is based on Ivan Miranda’s light bar, but you might be able to pull off something similar with a Pixelstick.

Researchers from NVIDIA demonstrate “A Style-Based Generator Architecture for Generative Adversarial Networks,” which is a fancy way of describing artificial intelligence that’s capable of creating human face variants and other objects that never actually existed in real life.

GoodHangups let you hang posters, cards, and other light items on a variety of surfaces, neatly and without frames. It consists of a set of small magnets and magnetic stickers, which are easy to remove and are reusable. Sold packs from 8 to 100 pieces.