Art

A Beached Whale in the Forests of Argentina

Argentinean sculptor Adrián Villar Rojas creates enormous sculptural works that seem like remnants of a science fiction film set, or bizarre moments from a surreal dream. One of my favorite pieces is My Family Dead (2009), in which he created a life-size blue whale in the woods outside Ushuaia, Argentina. The beached cetacean is pockmarked with tree stumps, making me wonder if it’s being slowly claimed by the forest or perhaps it’s a native resident. Beautiful.

Art

A Miniature City Built with Metal Typography

Type City is a recent artwork by artist Hong Seon Jang that uses pieces of movable type from a printing press to create an elaborate cityscape. It’s fascinating to watch as the need for printed books and typography wanes, the unused objects themselves are more frequently used as an actual medium. Jang also completed a much larger Type City in 2009. Also, if you liked this, make sure you watch the creation of Ephemicropolis by Peter Root, a city built from 100,000 staples. Images courtesy Hong Seon Jang and David B. Smith Gallery. (via quipsologies)

Design

Recycled Plastic Bottles Partially Filled with Colored Water Used to Create a Parking Canopy

Designer Garth Britzman of Lincoln, Nebraska used recycled bottles filled with colored water to create stunning topographical shade canopy for a vehicle. I love how the natural shape of the plastic bottles makes the pooled water look like leaves. See more over on Behance. (via my amp goes to 11)

Art Design

British Birds Made of LEGO

I just stumbled onto this expertly crafted series of birds found in Britain by Thomas Poulsom. His use of color and perfect selection of bricks really bring these animals to life. You can see the entire series of six birds here, and apparently there are many more to come. (via lustik)

Update: Thomas mentions that if enough people vote for his designs, they might become actual sets.

Animation Illustration

The Eagleman Stag: A BAFTA Winning Stop-Motion Short Film by Mikey Please

If you have 10 minutes to spare I strongly urge you to watch The Eagleman Stag, a lovely stop-motion short film by UK animator Mikey Please that won the 2011 BAFTA for best short animation. From Jason Sondhi’s review on Short of the Week:

Animated through stop-motion, the film incorporates thousands of hand-created models across 115 sets to tell the story of Peter Eagleman. From a young age, Peter possessed a peculiar awareness of time. Obsessed with the concept that any unit of time represents a differing fraction of one’s life depending on age, he becomes preoccupied with this “speeding up” of time as he grows older, and longs to reverse the process. In the meantime Peter grows, lives, ages. He becomes a celebrated entomologist, and through his work he stunningly stumbles upon a possible solution to his lifetime’s angst.

The foam used to create the models has such strange properties it’s difficult to believe these scenes aren’t digitally rendered.

Animation Music

A Hard-Hitting, Toy-Mincing, Stop-Motion Music Video for Delta Heavy

This new stop-motion music video for Delta Heavy is pretty incredible. Watch as a cavalcade of classic boardgames from your childhood meet an untimely demise, all for the sake of dubstep. Warning: dubstep, a genre of music my ears are still trying to play nice with. Directed by Ian Robertson.