Awesome Art

Great photography and lighting play a part in bringing out the beauty of Calvin Nicholls’ paper sculptures, but most of the beauty comes from what he can do with just paper and a scalpel.

Paper sculptor Kris Trappeniers creates pristinely twisty and complex portrait stencils – truly gorgeous art in and of itself – then completes each piece on canvas with spray paint or acrylics.

Youtube user BloodyRenegadeX likes to take his time to remind all of us that Sonic the Hedgehog is still cool in this neat little flipbook animation. But where are all the chili-dogs?

A cutthroat little business woman doesn’t let anyone get a freebie in this cleverly crafted animation from student Kyu-bum Lee. The only bad thing about the cartoon is just how short it is.

Over the course of about a month, Photographer Josh Owens (aka “mindrelic”) shot this dizzying and dramatic time-lapse footage from various hotel balconies around New York City.

A series of paper-cut silhouettes made by artist Olly Moss featuring favorite pop-culture icons, from comic books to movies to video games and more. Warning: the link above is a serious time sink.

This 18″ x 24″ poster offers 282 sobriquets from the world of rap music, arranged according to semantics. Each poster is signed by the artists and numbered from the master edition.

Wang Yuyang’s Artificial Moon was constructed from hundreds of compact fluorescent lightbulbs; it was originally exhibited in Shanghai, where the moon is frequently obscured due to light pollution.

Pow! Bam! Swatch! Jeremy Scott’s Yellow Flash watch puts comic book style on your wrist. We normally wouldn’t think of wearing a bright yellow watch, but we’ll make an exception here.

Did this behind-the-scenes-esque trailer for an absurdist comedy about a luchador named Escargot Man and a man in pajamas trapped in a magical room just change our Netflix queue? Yup.

We’re fans of the cool animations which can be achieved by simply placing objects on a turntable and spinning them. Here we have an unusual set of zoetropes made from tasty eats (and matchsticks).

In Hambuster, food eats you. A fun, gory and masterfully made short film from the minds of five deranged and talented graduating students from the computer graphics university Supinfocom Arles.

Dana Tanamachi is a graphic designer who makes custom chalk signs. She’s created pieces for magazines, book covers, hotels and even one of Google’s offices. More here. Watch her work here.

We’re not quite sure what to make of Chris Ware and John Kuramoto’s offbeat short animated film about a mouse and his decapitated partner, but there’s something surprisingly endearing about it.

Artist Etienne Cliquet creates intricate paper cut designs, which measure less than an inch wide, then unfold (and fold) to form new shapes as water gradually invades the paper via capillary action.

Director Chris Milk created this interactive music video for ROME, a project by Danger Mouse & Daniele Luppi featuring Jack White & Norah Jones. Using WebGL tech, it plays best in Chrome Canary.

By taking a gigantic electromagnet and a bunch of pit balls loaded with their own electromagnets, Physalia Studio manages to create the greatest plaything ever. Or it could just be CGI. Still cool.

Sam Klemke captured a small bit of his life every year for the last 35 years, compiling them all into a bittersweet clip that moves backwards in time all the way back to when he was 20 years-old.

Designers from Makhno Workshop really captured the essence of a twister with storm cloud chairs, raindrop light fixtures and splintered walls for this restaurant in Kiev. Maybe the food’s good too.

The planning that went into this projection mapping really makes it shine. Enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into a site-specific theater piece from the creative professionals at URBANSCREEN.

Film student Adam Grabowski created these brilliantly primitive animations using household tools and appliances for the 2011 Motion Graphics Showcase at NYC’s School of Visual Arts.

Who here among us created this rather hilarious and (somewhat accurate) infographic that explains the difficulties of the modern-day internet lifestyle? Whoever you are, we love that belly full of vitriol.

Artist Nikki Rosato makes intricate portraits by cutting maps along the street and river lines, forming a vein-like structure for her art. These 3D human forms are her most dramatic works.