What do stormtroopers do on their days off? Feed bread to gigantic pigeons, jam out on Guitar Hero, catch fish in a toilet and send vaguely insulting emails to Luke Skywalker, according to these photos by Stefan Le Du.

The amateur photographer is shooting daily photos of stormtrooper action figures posed in various scenarios, either performing everyday tasks or recreating famous film scenes, for a project called Stormtroopers 365.

Several miniseries within the series follow themes, like “D’oh!”, wherein one of the stormtroopers repeatedly gets himself into trouble whether getting his head stuck in a bottle or finding himself upside-down in a box. Another, “Not the Droid”, has the stormtroopers running into Wall-E, Calculon and others while searching for C3PO.

But don’t for a second imagine that they don’t have important tasks to get up to, like “Getting rid of swine flu, one pig at a time.”

See the whole series on Stefan’s Flickr page.

Colorfully Creative Monochromatic Photography

Variety in color can be amazing, but pushing a single color can be even more. Here are some eyeopening monochromatic shots in red, blue, green, purple, orange, and yellow.

Remember going to birthday parties or the carnival as a child and getting your face painted? Face painting is fun and magical, and it lets us temporarily transform ourselves. You can be just about anything, from a fierce animal to a dainty fairy to a weird celebrity look-alike. Unfortunately, most of us stop getting our faces painting when we become adults. James Kuhn, however, picked up the habit as an adult – and ran with it.

James Kuhn has considered him an artist for his whole life, but it wasn’t until he grew up that he began painting his own face with a new theme every single day. He decided to do one new face painting a day for a year, in the vein of the other “365 days of self portraits” projects. He didn’t enjoy other 365 projects, saying they were self-indulgent or silly. So he decided to take another (arguably also silly) route by creating a masterpiece every day.

All of James’ paintings are done on himself, and he usually takes his own pictures as well. These are some of the most unique self-portraits ever, since he looks quite different in every one of them. If additional pieces are needed, he usually cuts them out of cardboard, paints them, and sticks them to his face as needed.

James is always looking for new inspiration for his creations. He has used everything from cartoon characters to his favorite foods to famous duos and groups, and everything in between. Some of the most amazing face portraits are those featuring two or more people. It’s fun to decipher how he divides up his existing facial features to create features for the characters.

His particular form of artistic body painting is just for fun, though his other artwork has been displayed in galleries. He believes that, overall, making money from art shouldn’t be an artist’s top priority; their goal should be to push through their fear and their conventional thinking to create something new and thought-provoking. His incredible face painting has gained him international attention, and he’s been featured on TV shows and in newspapers around the world.

The artist, who lives in Michigan, describes himself as a face paint illusionist, drag queen, performance artist, and full-time Christian. He’s recently been featured in a Ripley’s Believe It or Not! picture book, and although the 365 days of self-portraits are over, he continues to create masterpieces on his own face. You can see many of his face paintings come to life on his YouTube channel.

16 3D Graffiti Artists and Street Painters

These amazing artists produce three-dimensional works that trick our sense of perspective and seem 3D despite being painted, drawn or chalked onto flat 2D surfaces.

By now, we’re all used to seeing graffiti and public art in urban and suburban settings. We’re so used to it, in fact, that we typically walk right by without giving it a second glance. But would you be able to ignore graffiti if it were done in a medium or a method you’d never seen before? These 11 innovative artists are stepping up the standards for graffiti and public art by doing it in ways we don’t usually see, but just might notice. Some of them are pure brilliance and sure to catch the attention of even the most jaded city-dweller.

Buff Diss

If you saw Buff Diss‘ work on the street, you might be inclined to think it was paint. But the crisp, clean, bold lines give it away: he works in sticky tape. The Australian artist uses masking tape and electrical tape to lay his images down over streets, walls and windows, making it at once 3D and part of the urban landscape. He’s shown his unusual graffiti style in galleries, but his street art is what’s really amazing. It’s definitely got a graffiti flavor to it, but it also has a decidedly playful feel.

Poster Boy NYC

If you’ve taken the subway in New York in the last couple of years, you’ve probably seen some of Poster Boy’s work. He’s an anti-consumerist guerrilla artist, meaning that he takes the advertisement posters that are so prevalent in subway stations, uses a razor blade to liberate their components, and rearranges them into new messages. He’s been called New York’s answer to Banksy, though his pieces seem more pointed and anti-consumerist than Banksy’s. He’s said that there will be no capitalizing on his newly-found fame; no books or gallery shows are in the works. It’s rumored that Poster Boy isn’t a single person, but rather a subculture movement fueled by the work of many. We may never know the truth, but Poster Boy’s work is inspiring the New Yorkers (and Internet denizens) who see it to think twice about ubiquitous advertising. Visit his Flickr stream to truly appreciate the genius behind his subversive poster reorganizations.

Jim Denevan

Drawing in the sand may not seem to have much in common with graffiti. But Jim Denevan’s intricate and organic sand drawings take hours to complete, require great skill, and are even more impermanent than spray paint on a wall. He may not have to hurry or work in darkness for fear of getting caught, but Denevan’s California sand drawings get back to the heart of public art: creating something for everyone to enjoy and asking for nothing in return. He does his drawings free-hand with a large piece of found driftwood, using no measuring devices of any kind, and they are so large-scale that viewing them effectively from the ground isn’t always possible – almost like sand-based crop circles. He’s been known to walk as much as 30 miles in the production of just one piece.

Benoit Lemoine

With so many street artists taking themselves ever so seriously, it’s good to see one who seems like a prankster at heart. French artist Benoit Lemoine created this zipper tape so that he could add zippers to whatever public spaces were lacking zippers. Imagine what you could do with a big roll of industrial-strength urban zipper. While we’re sure police wouldn’t be thrilled about long strips of tape appearing on every surface imaginable, the tape is presumably removable, making it an impermanent but completely fun form of graffiti.

Posterchild

Posterchild does, as the name implies, work with posters and stencils – but those are nothing new. Some of his most distinctive work has been the planter boxes he built and installed in unused flyer boxes, newspaper boxes, and telephone booths. His unique form of guerrilla gardening uses existing unused structures that are otherwise simply wasted space. He plants flowers and trees in them, turning them into something beautiful and unexpected. His most well-known – and most imitated – project, though, is the Super Mario Brothers Blocks he constructed and hung around Windsor, Ontario in 2005.  The Canadian artist has a ton of other public art projects on his website that are definitely worth a look.

Color Me Katie and Googly Eye Cru

Even the staunchest of public art opponents couldn’t argue that these googly eyes do anything but cause smiles. Engineered by the always-adorable photographer and street artist Color Me Katie, these eyes, with a bit of tape on the back, were put onto random objects to give them instant personality and charm.

We don’t know if Color Me Katie is involved with the Googly Eye Cru, but they, like her, work in Brooklyn and enjoy slapping adorable eyes onto otherwise-mundane objects. Their extensive photographs prove that they’ve eyeballed just about everything with a flat surface.

Sam3

Sam3 is a Spanish artist whose gigantic silhouette graffiti has been seen all around Europe and in South America. His incredible graffiti has been well-loved for a long time, but his cardboard sculptures are just as amazing. These installations in London, Sao Paulo and Murcia are all made of cardboard and all use public spaces to illustrate the social problems of over-surveillance and homelessness.

D. Billy

D. Billy’s irreverent art reminds us all to be just a little more playful in our daily lives. His “site interventions” involve putting colorful tape, cardboard and even balloons into the dull urban landscape. Spelling out onomatopoeia or just making something ugly into something fun, his public art is impermanent but definitely draws second looks and laughter all over Brooklyn.

Jeremy Novy

To Milwaukee artist Jeremy Novy, public art is about using public spaces to send a message. He understands that the typical art gallery visitor is educated and wealthy, but the majority of the population may never intentionally seek out art. He creates public works that make his city a better place to live while bringing a bit of the arts to everyone, regardless of income or background. Seeing problems such as abandoned telephone booths and boarded up buildings, he created solutions involving overlaying pictures on the disused objects.

SpY

The streets of Madrid have seen SpY’s graffiti and public art around since the 1980s. His work has run the gamut from simple graffiti to the complicated repurposing (and reinstallation) of street signs and public bike racks. His goal is to break the monotony of urban dwellers and bring a moment of laughter into an otherwise ordinary day.

20 Light Graffiti Artists & Photographers

Light graffiti is uniquely ephemeral and inextricably intertwined with the art of photography, sometimes even invisible to the naked eye and apparent only on film.

Steampunk is the mating of technology and romance, breeding some of the most wickedly cool gadget’s and art you’ve ever seen. It’s cool and brass-clad sexy. With a post apocalyptic type of rebellion, Steampunk enthusiast mod almost everything you can imagine and then some. This amazing urban art movement was birthed on the Internet, so it’s no wonder hi-tech hardware hackers are romancing technology with a Victorian passion, yearning for the aesthetic realm of The Time That Never Happened; Steampunk – where the future meets the past. Here are some of the slickest mods, 26 sexy Steampunk art and hi-tech hacks.

Mouse, USB, RSS Feed

(image credits:ilovecandid,forum modding,geeky gadgets,Steampunk Workshop)

The top two are fully functional modded mice, each is a one of a kind shiny handcrafted brass wonder. The USB drive holds 2GB of storage, but if you take this slick stick to work and someone tries to walk off with it, the vintage look with copper and brass gears, pipes, and bolts will make whoever uses it stand out in a crowd. RSS feeds, are you addicted to them? At one historic time, people were addicted to news coming hot off the telegraph. The shiny yet vintage telegraph machine is reborn as an RSS feed gadget.

Monitor & Keyboard

(image credit:DataMancer)

The Datamancer is an expert in steampunk-style technology. He is a Master of Mod. The 22″ widescreen LCD frame is solid 1/4-inch brass that was sanded and polished to a high shine. The base is a modernized remake of brass and black marble. The keyboard is a mixture of Neo-Victorianism and brass hi-tech.

Steampunk Flat Panel

(image credits:Steampunk Workshop)

Jake von Slatt is another computer mod icon on the steampunk stage. This Steampunk Desktop has a base made to look like marble. His hardware hacks to this flat panel LCD include knobs, gold painted pieces and plenty of brass.  For more retro-tech goodness, he added a brass keyboard and kerosene lamp. Jake von Slatt operates the Steampunk Workshop where you can find step-by-step directions to turn your computer into Victorian style and the Age of Scientific Wonders.

Victorian All-in-One PC

(image credits:steampunk workshop)

In this mod, Jake von Slatt researched Victorian era stages and discovered they were approximately 4:3 aspect ratio – the 16:9 wide-screen ratio from the cinema. He coated the 24″ wide screen monitor base with black spray lacquer and topped the supports off with some pieces of a brass chandelier. Then he fashioned monitor curtains for the stage on the frame. Finally, he completed the Victorian All-in-One PC which has Kubuntu 7.10  (Gutsy Gibbon) installed and is fit for the office of Queen Victoria.

DataMancer’s Steampunk Laptop

The Datamancer reached out to millions over the Internet with this Victorian laptop mod. With this hack, he converted unknown masses to the aesthetic realm of Steampunk. This mod is so cool, yet it’s steamy hot. Who knows? The Datamancer’s next mod might be so hot that the heat wave will hit and crack your hard drive.

More Steampunk Computers

(image credits:portal23,Boston Globe,DataMancer)

More and more people crank out fabulous Steampunk fabrications. At top left, that computer was named Windows Vista 1907. Yet the top right computer is a blend of science fiction and industry in a piece called The ElectriClerk, fashioned from a 1988 Macintosh SE computer, a c.1923 Underwood typewriter, and a fresnel lens by Andrew H. Leman. The Victorian looking jewelry box is another laptop mod by Datamancer.

Cell Phone

(image credits:Slash Gear,Slash Gear,don pezzano,savas place)

Even cell phones have not escaped the aesthetic realm of Steampunk. These are made from recycled materials, vintage gears, old iron and other metals. The top two cells phones are from Russia with love. The workmanship on all four mobile phones make these modded gadgets a hot item. The bottom right phone was created from a Nokia, back when it was boring and not yet a symbol of grandiose invention.

Masks

(image credits:Tom Banwell)

The incredibly talented Tom Banwell dabbled in a variety of media, before his one of kind talents and interests combined the arts of history, costuming, mechanics, and fantasy. He admits to being wildly creative with his leatherwork. On the top left is Banwell’s Pachydermos mask, followed by Sentinel, Underground Explorer on the bottom left, and the Fire Master mask.

Electric Skull

(image credit:Donovan Design 2009)

Known for many Steampunk designs, Art Donovon created The Electric Skull for The Museum of Oxford Steampunk Art Exhibition. Donovan made this 27″ tall, comprised of solid brass, light, glass, and acrylic. The fact he is also handy with the craft of electric skills no doubt helped make this glowing skull gadget an extremely slick mod.

Gadgets & Robots

(image credits:brute force leather,Stephanie Halleux,Molly Friedrich)

The trio above were fashioned for The Museum of Oxford Steampunk Art Exhibition. The large leather robot was created by Stephanie Halleux, only one of her leather robot masterpieces. If you visit the exhibition, going on now at Oxford University, you can view Amanda Scrivener’s Lord Featherstone’s Clockwork Arm up close and personal. The bottom right is a creation from Molly “Porkshanks” Friedrich. She states, “I also lavish attention to detail and try to imbue each item with a narrative of some sort so that it feels more like an artifact from another place and time.”

Steampunk Art

(image credit: Kris Kuksi)

Kris Kuksi’s art speaks of a timelessness, of potentiality and motion attempting to reach on forever, and “yet pessimistically delayed; forced into the stillness of death and eternal sleep.” He themes his art to teach us “that although death may pursue us arbitrarily, we should never neglect to mourn the tremendous loss of individual potential.” This art is entitled, Caravan Assault Appearatus.

Steampunk Motorcycle

This is Tom Sepe’s Steampunk Motorcycle on BRINK TV. This electric motorcycle gives off steam like a piece of the past mixing with a moment of time from the future.

1896 Steam Motorcycle

Pete’s Garage presents “1896 Steam Motorcycle.”

If all this retro-futurism has left you yearning for more from the realm of Steampunk, check back next week for sexy as sin Steampunk artistic designs.

25 Hardware Hacks: Old Tech Turned into New Gadgets

Repurposed gadgets let your inner eco-geek blossom. Here are 25 hardware hacks and magnificent manipulations of e-waste repurposed to functional geeky gadgets.

What could be more welcoming than a pot of tea in the morning? (Coffee drinkers, you are not allowed to answer that). From its humble beginnings in ancient China, the teapot has gone from obscurity to the height of luxury and finally to worldwide ubiquity, embedding itself firmly in the English language (”as useless as a chocolate teapot“) and becoming an object of adoration by millions, particularly the Brits. But now teapots are disappearing – at least the traditional kind are. The next generation of beverage-buckets are here and they couldn’t look more different from the norm, as these 19 examples show.

(Image via: Yanko Design)

Believe it or not, this is a teapot (rather than a model from 2001: A Space Odyssey) – and its curious, gorgeous design addresses the age-old problem of tea leaves. Those of us who insist on a full-blooded brew skip the tea-bags and go for the loose-leafed option…but are forced to faff about with a strainer to get the results into our cups. The Dione Tea Set is the best of both worlds by containing a fine mesh that traps the tea leaves in one hemisphere, and when you are ready for your cuppa, you flip the pot over, straining the tea through the mesh into the pot’s base which becomes your cup!

(Images via: Yanko Design and Gizmodo)

Is that pot still warm? Since there is little nastier than a tepid cup of tea (hot, good; iced, good; tepid, bleargh), modern designers have invented teapots that can tell you at a glance how hot their contents are. The Creativi*tea pot blushes to an appropriately flaming scarlet when it is up to temperature – while the Space Invaders pot lets loose its pesky interstellar critters from behind an innocuous pastoral scene when your tea is piping hot.

(Image via: Clothing Shoes Accessories)

Staying with teapots that should rightly be called tea-carafes, here is the snuggest of them all. The Eva Solo teapot’s winsome curves (because this pot is slightly kinky, let’s be honest here) are hugged by a zipped cozy to trap the heat inside. For those wishing a slightly less naughty-looking version, it also comes in black.

(Images via: Sorapot)

Now for a design that has got tongues wagging. Garnering the enthusiastic attention of Wired, Dwell, New York magazine, Apartment Therapy and many more, the Sorapot is a word-of-mouth marvel. Glance above and you can see why: the body is transparent and allows you to see your tea brewing, all without sacrificing the simply grab’n'pour functionality. Unclip, up-end, pop your leaves in, top up with hot water, reassemble…and enjoy the show.

(Images via: Peter Bo and Design Milk)

And for other teapots that look nothing like teapots? First up, the Maru, a torus of ceramic with a walnut base that wants you to slow down – which you most certainly would, as you struggle to work out what it is and how it works. Then there is the Potter, looking like a cross between a non-stick saucepan and a kettle (so much so that the product page comes with a warning for the unwary).

(Images via: design boom)

You have just woken, and you are blearily making your first cuppa of the day in the hope that it will give you the strength to go on. The Mistea is designed to catch your mood – shaped like a snail, it encourages you to take your unhurried time and enjoy yourself before things get manic. Just don’t get too comfortable.

(Images via: freshome and Yanko Design)

But if getting too comfortable is your guiding principle in life, aim for Lotte Alpert’s Lazy Teapot. Thanks to its rocking action when in dock, you don’t have to lift this pot to pour your tea – and the temperature control means you don’t have to expend a single second’s thought on wondering if it’s hot enough.  The Zygo looks like it should do something similar, but in fact this sturdy, fantastically curved design (centred around a stainless steel sphere) is the traditional kind of pick-me-up beverage.

(Images via: TeaPottery and Book Hunter’s Holiday and thisnext and design boom)

Can’t tear yourself away from the computer screen or from your book, even for just one cup of tea? The Computea or Book Teapot might help (or make your problem worse – one of the two, anyway). If you’re feeling distracted or too tired to think, the Gun Teapot waved in your face should refocus your attention nicely…while the T-Pot’s function is obvious even to the fuzziest brain.

(Image via: design boom)

When teapots are having such obvious identity crises, it seems inevitable that many designers will turn to other non-beverage sources of inspiration…such as birds. The Birdy tea set copies the perky shape of our smaller avian friends- but for good practical reasons. The set’s tea-cups and saucers are fixed directly against the pot’s body, heating up as it heats up – so when you’re ready to pour, it is into pre-warmed receptables that won’t cool your tea before it reaches your mouth.

(Images via: Yanko Design and The Boston Globe)

The Cigno’s inspiration is obvious, and the design manages to look stunning and be practical at the same time – the handle is its ribbed-rubber neck.  (Now to ruin the elegant vibe: would it be the perfect venue for a spot of teapot-blowing?) On similar lines, the So Fly copies the shape of a nesting black-headed gull (the “head” being a rubber lid).

(Images via: uberreview and designboom)

But the world is far from finished with the traditional teapot shape, as these two designs show. The Toaster Teapot slots in nicely with our current obsession with multifunction gadgetry, firing out slices of toast while your tea is brewing inside. Tropics, on the other hand, isn’t a teapot at all, it’s actually a citrus fruit squeezer…but the teapot shape lends itself so well to the idea that we’re amazed it hasn’t been thought of already. So, while faux-teapots dispense lemon juice, actual teapots are getting harder and harder to identify…all over a hot drink that is supposed to relax us! Ah, modern life.

173 Radical Retrofuturistic Designs & Technologies

From retrocool concept cars to far-out fashion in sci-fi inspired cities of tomorrow, these 131 samples of retrofuturistic design & technology will take you back to the good old days to come!