Netherlands based designer Rogier Wieland (previously) has just completed another one of his impressive stop motion ads for Moleskin that relies almost entirely on notebooks to create nearly every aspect of the animation including the precisely cut typography. The making-of video is pretty great too and I’ve included it here as well.
So what do you get when you cross one of the world’s most popular video games of all time and a giant orange squash? Pumpktris. The days of goblins, witches, and slack-jawed faces carved into pumpkins are officially over, and forget hyper realistic zombie hoards. Nathan over at the DIY website HahaBird upgraded his pumpkin this year using 125 embedded LEDs and other hardware that makes use of the pumpkin’s stem as a joystick resulting in a playable game of Tetris that can even keep score. If you’re interested he carefully documented everything in this handy Pumpktris tutorial. Unless your porch has an arcade including Pumpkin Mario Bros. this Halloween, you’re basically not even trying. (via prosthetic knowledge)
I love these ceramic creature cups by design group Yumi-Yumi out of Brookyln. At the base of each mug rests an animal that’s slowly revealed as you consume your tasty beverage. Good to the last dripping octopus. (via etsy)
Horse in Motion, a mechanical flipbook installation by Wendy Marvel
Ascension, a mechanical flipbook installation by Wendy Marvel
View of a prototype FlipBooKit
FlipBooKit Detail
FlipBooKit Detail
In 2011 kinetic artists Mark Rosen and Wendy Marvel created a series of wonderful mechanical flipbooks based on the work of Eadweard Muybridge, the guy responsible for pioneering photographic studies of motion. After touring a few art galleries and making a well-received appearance at the 2012 Maker Faire the duo teamed up with manufacturing designer Steven Goldstein to create kits that mere mortals such as you and I can use to create nostalgic moving pictures of our own design. If you’re as ridiculously excited about this project as I am, head on over to Kickstarter to pledge a few bucks.
Artist Carolina Fontoura Alzaga constructs impressive chandeliers using chains, wheels and other parts from old bicycles as part of a series she calls CONNECT. Alzaga has lived in Brazil and Mexico and now works out of a studio in Los Angeles where the Etsy Blog recently caught up with her to conduct the interview and tour above. Of her work she says:
This developing body of work draws inspiration from the aesthetics of victorian era chandeliers, DIY and Bike Culture, and follows an art tradition of utilizing non artistic materials for sculpture.
This series addresses class codes, power dynamics, reclaimed agency, and ecological responsibility. The traditional chandelier is seen as a bourgeois commodity, a cachet of affluence, excess, and as such power. The recycled bicycle parts become a representation of the dismissed, invisible, and powerless, but are also an affirmation of self-propelled movement. The bicycle chandelier thereby creates a new third meaning of reclaimed agency.
I think if I ever had need for a chandelier it would definitely be one of these. Alzaga has a number of pieces currently available in her shop. (via laughing squid)
Photographer and designer David A. Reeves has been working on a wonderful series of action vignettes made from cut-paper silhouettes. Each image is carefully layered and focused to create a pretty stunning depth of field including blurry backdrops of clouds and mountains. Check out his website for many more shots including scenes from Batman and some depictions from the wonderful video game Limbo. If you liked these also check out the work of Thomas Allen and these bookends by Knob Creek Metal Arts. (via geekologie)
These funky tree lights were designed by Judson Beaumont of Straight Line Designs, a furniture design firm out of Vancouver. Called Tree Rings the lights are made out of a beetle pine shell topped with mirrored Plexiglas that allows the embedded cool fluorescent light to shine through in the dark. I’m not sure of the practical application, but it appears the lights can be used as as small tables and bear enough weight to act as a stool. The pieces debuted last summer at Duthie Gallery. (via zymaze on fancy)
Mysteries of Vernacular is an ongoing video series by NYC-based Myriapod Productions that explores the etymology of individual words through a carefully animated book. According to Myriapod the series will eventually include 26 stories, each of which takes nearly 80 hours to research, construct and animate. Since taking Latin in high school I’ve been keenly aware of the bizarre ways in which different cultures appropriate and modify language, but this series really casts an engaging light on the whole messy ordeal. (via flavorwire)
