What do Bill Clinton, Bruce Lee, Charlemagne and Jack Kervorkian have in common? They’ve all been made into custom historical LEGO mini-figures by LEGO artist Jamie Spencer. Spencer, also known as Morgan190, created an incredible collection of historical figures for the 2007 Fine Clonier Historical Figure Contest.

Each historical “minifig”, as these LEGO creations are called, had to be made only from official LEGO elements for the contest – hence, Spencer explains, the “Conan O’Brien hair” seen on many of them, and the Harry Potter scar on John Lennon’s forehead.

The figures range from the obscure  – like Charaka, the founder of Ayurveda (Indian Medicine) – to ubiquitous modern personalities like Donald Trump.

Spencer, a longtime LEGO enthusiast who spent untold hours building with them as a child, cites the Space and Castles lines as his favorite LEGO themes.

Spencer’s other LEGO minifigs often have dark sci-fi themes, and he has also created a few ornate steampunk designs. Asked by BuySteampunk.com where he gets his parts from, Spencer replied, “I don’t necessarily limit my collection to any one of LEGO’s lines so I happily pull accessories and parts from wherever will work.”

“The source of minifig parts ranges anywhere from Indiana Jones to Castle. One of the greatest aspects of LEGO is that it’s all interchangeable!”

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Nicola L. is one of those artists who has simply been around forever. She’s known by only her first name and last initial, and she manages to bring unmistakable style to each and every thing she does. She’s been known to create performance art, films, conceptual art, and sculptures, but perhaps her most enduring form is her functional art. It’s at once whimsical and serious, serving a very real function but having loads of fun doing it.

Looking at Nicola L.’s art, it’s hard not to notice her preferred subjects: eyes, heads and snails make repeated appearances. Though she does at times visit different forms for her functional art, the human body remains a subject of continued interest for her.

Since her first solo gallery show in 1969, French-born Nicola L. has been showing her functional art in galleries all over the world. She makes her pieces – lamps, planters, fish tanks, tables and sofas – in extremely limited editions, and in 2006 she had a large retrospective show of her functional art in Ingrao Gallery in NYC.

These stylized shapes of the human head, eyes, body and limbs take on a whole new meaning when they are in the context of functional art. They become familiar and warm, but also very playful. We don’t usually see head-shaped bookcases or eye-shaped ceiling lamps, so Nicola’s pieces often inspire wide smiles as the unexpected shapes are noted by viewers.

But there is also a hint of creepiness about some of the pieces, especially those featuring eyes. The artist manages to interject that tiny bit of discomfort into these pieces that many of us are used to feeling from conceptual artists: it seems that there might just be a subtext there, but we feel like we are missing it.

The artist says that she came by functional art almost accidentally after constructing a foot-shaped sofa for her and her friends to sit on. Nicola L.’s impressive body of work spans over 40 years and is truly something to behold. And if you can afford to furnish your home with functional art, hers is some of the most timelessly impressive you’ll find.

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Photo-realistic art is really on its own level in the art world. While some may ask what the point is when taking a picture is so much easier, to these artists the point is obvious: painstakingly creating a tiny piece of fiction that looks good enough to be fact is a feat of artistic talent. Is it really possible for an artist to recreate reality so perfectly? It is, and it’s the specialty of the artists below. Their skill is so great that sometimes, you just have to double-check to make sure their paintings really aren’t photographs.

Roberto Bernardi

Roberto Bernardi is an Italian artist who has been painting since he was a small child. After a stint as an art restorer and some time spent exploring his own personal style, he discovered photo-realism. The style struck a chord with him because of his strong perfectionist tendencies, and photorealism still allows him to express himself artistically while being precise. His biography sums up photo-realism beautifully: he calls it an “intense and spectacular” type of painting.

Maria Medina

Also experimental and curious about what she could create, Maria Medina has dabbled in several different types of art, from hat making to sculptural metalwork. Her photo-realistic oil paintings, though, capture a playful beauty that is truly spectacular. She’s able to imbue a sweet personality into even inanimate objects.

Doug Bloodworth

Influenced by Sunday comics, Mad Magazine, and BB guns, Doug Bloodworth uses inspiration from his own life to create his photo-realistic paintings. Every painting has a story, which the artist relates on his website. Bloodworth also paints murals on Lynx buses in Central Florida, and they are every bit as impressive as his smaller works.

Denis Minamora

Denis Minamora came by his photo-realistic style naturally. He was raised in a tradition of storytelling and pictographic art, and he calls upon that tradition to create his unbelievably realistic paintings. He combines watercolors, pen and ink, and chalk pastels to make vivid, intense and strikingly lovely pieces of fine art. Having an additional history as a photographer, Minamora is keenly aware of the subtle difference caused by perspective and lighting when viewing art. He has take that into account and uses those differences to enhance the realism of his paintings.

Rob Hefferan

The undeniable grace captured in Rob Hefferan’s portraits is a testament to his talent. The English artist does commercial work which is stunning, but his bridal portraits and other figure work are absolutely breathtaking. If it’s possible, they seem almost more realistic than photographs, displaying the living warmth of each of the subjects.

D.J. Hall

American artist D.J. Hall has gone through an incredible metamorphosis as her career has progressed. She has gone from painting smiling blond ladies of luxury to relaxing her subjects a bit more, letting their personalities shine through. She has said of her early work that she was reacting to a difficult childhood and re-enacting happy moments at her grandparents’ poolside, where everyone would smile widely for the camera. Her ultra-realistic paintings are almost heartbreaking in their sense of longing and loss hidden behind a sparkling facade. Hall continues to create, but her more recent paintings are more honest – though many still depict swimming pools, one of her favorite settings.

Paul Roberts

Paul Roberts grew up in Wales as the child of artists, and he followed in their footsteps to become a talented and well-recognized painter. But when he became a rock star with the band Sniff’n The Tears, he let painting fall to the side for a while. Regardless, his amazingly realistic paintings remain impressive enough to win him continued worldwide acclaim. His paintings have been described as being rather like uncomfortably realistic dreams, but the artist’s intention is simply to capture the energy of life on canvas.

Audrey Flack

Audrey Flack’s considerable talent can be seen in any of the multiple types of art she produces, but some of the most well-known and memorable is her photorealistic art. She was among the first to use this vivid style in the US in the 1960s, and her work remains today just as impressive as it was then. She continues to influence artists all around the world, and she currently lives in Long Island.

Gregory Thielker

The amazingly realistic art of Gregory Thielker manages to transport the viewer to another time and place. Look at his paintings and your mind inevitably drifts to a memorable rainy day, a drive through bad weather to see someone special, or a specific moment in time that is called up by these magnificent yet often gloomy images. His use of rain drops and weather to obscure the details of the background make his paintings seem all the more photographic in nature.

Antonio Capel

Antonio Capel portrays a brighter, softer type of photorealism. His subjects are varied and have included buildings, baskets of kittens, bullfighters and much else in between, but his most compelling works of art are his figures. Mostly women and young girls, their images are sweet, innocent, and intimate. The talented Spanish painter breathes a warmth into his paintings that few others can match.

Richard Estes

Richard Estes was one of the pioneers of the photorealism movement in the 1960s, and his timeless urban landscapes are still some of the most intricately detailed photorealistic paintings out there. After moving to New York City in 1956, he worked as a graphic artist for a decade before finally being able to support himself by creating art. Asked why they are so gritty and realistic (sometimes depressingly so), Estes has famously said of his paintings “I don’t enjoy looking at the things I paint, so why should you enjoy it?” .

Chuck Close

Chuck Close is another of the photorealism pioneers, and also one of the most amazing stories in the art world. In the 1960s and 1970s, he made a name for himself as an exceptionally talented photorealist artist, and he was known for using some unconventional techniques. He was paralyzed from the neck down by a rare spinal artery condition in 1988, but worked hard to regain some use of his limbs. He still paints using a paintbrush taped to his wrist, working in low-resolution grid squares to create paintings that are amazingly realistic at a distance.

Cees Penning

Holland-born artist Cees Penning was once a successful photo retoucher, but when digital photo retouching left him without a job, he began to focus on other types of work. He works now in several different fields but devotes his free time to painting in watercolors and oils. He says that he’s been an artist since kindergarten, and his oil painting is completely self-taught. His background as a photo retoucher has compelled him to create paintings that are as realistic as possible.

Alastair Lockwood

Frustration and artistic boredom nearly drove Alastair Lockwood to give up art completely. Luckily for everyone who has ever seen one of his incredible pieces of art, he was lured back to art by the creative drive within him. Today, he creates these amazing photorealistic colored pencil drawings, feeling the thrill of being his own boss and creating what he wants to create. His website is full of charming English self-deprecating humor as well as his own unique brand of photorealistic art.

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Steampunk, folks seem to love it or to hate it. C’mon, you gotta admit the guns and guitars are cool. Rust, steam, copper tubing, clockwork gears, gauges, and brass-coated coolness appeal to the rebel in us all. Steampunk is a vision of the future as seen through the eyes of the past. Depending how you feel about shredding or shooting, this beautifully crafted blend of form and function, these pseudo-Victorian mechanical “steampunk” style guns and guitars should make you smile…or perhaps drool?  Here are sexy as sin and amazing modifications of contemporary technologies to fit the aesthetic of Steampunk guns and guitars.

Abney Park Guitar

(image credits:nullalux,porkshanks)

Abney Park is a Seattle band influenced by Steampunk. Nathaniel Johnstone plays a guitar for Abney Park and influenced many Steampunk enthusiasts to do more than listen to, sing along, or dance to their music. Brass, gold, knobs, and clockwork gears are blended into a functioning fashion of fantasy where past and future mix into this guitar.

Steampunk Guitar – Villianizer

(image credit:Rob Lee)

This is a Jackson Rhoads V custom rebuilt guitar into a steampunk look. With a name like Villianizer, you know it’s wicked slick and can pull some cool tricks. All the fittings are brass and copper, with copper-plated hardware and pickups, gauges, gears, pipes, welds, and a bucket of fake rust. Cyberpunks, musicians, geeks who surf from the chair, many of us heard tales of the dastardly looking Villianizer long ago. It’s still sweet though. But how does it sound?

Have a listen to The Villianizer.

Organum Insolitus

(image credit:Metropolis Music)

This custom steampunk guitar, Organum Insolitus, was built for the 2008 Jersey City Artists Studio Tour. Designed using elements of steampunk, Organum Insolitus incorporates clockwork gears, hand hammered brass, cloth wire and wood to show an alternate historical glimpse of a 19th century electric guitar. The guitar features a television with Fresnel lens magnifier, an onboard phaser and amplifier. Rather than use multiple pickups, the one humbucker can be repositioned with the red faucet handle. The television, guitar, effects and amplifier can all be patched through to each other in any configuration using the patch bay on the front of the guitar. The pickup or television can also be outputted through a standard 1/4″ cable to an external amplifier.

Steampunk Guitar Norwescon 32

(image credit:deviant art,djwudi)

This handcrafted masterpiece, The Elder Bass Guitar, was created by Molly “Porkshanks” Friedrich. Porkshanks writes, “I am honored to have been involved with creating art for the bands Abney Park, Mungus, The Georgetown Orbits, and musician Michael ‘Creature.’ Steampunk creators that you know best.” She is also a featured artist at the Museum Exhibition of Steampunk Art, which recently opened and will run continually through February 21, 2010.

Steampunked Guitars

(image credit:deviant art,r3v II cls,deviant art,deviant art)

The beloved musical weaponized beast at the top is named the Victorian Axe Cannon. On the top right is the Steampunk Hero. From Maker Faire 2008, and pictured on the bottom left are two more steampunk guitars. The Les Paul on the bottom right was tweaked and modded with gauges, copper, brass and rust into an aesthetically pleasing steampunk-style guitar.

Steampunk Guitar Maker Faire 2008

(image credit:octopurpl)

What we like or don’t like is all about personal point of view. Here is another guitar created with gears and steampunk bling. It was on display at Maker Faire, snapped at this angle to give you a different perspective. Maker Faire is an amazing event where engineering savvy and childlike whimsy overlap as scores of techies, crafters, artists, and visionaries gather in an imaginative playground. Tinkerers and backyard experimenters interact in a massive show-and-tell and do-it-yourself steampunk extravaganza.

The Nautilus Steampunk Guitar

(image credits:gizmodo)

This modded masterpiece, The Nautilus, was inspired by the film 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The retrofuturistic design of the Nautilus includes copper pipes, shell topped knobs, and a cool flickering plasma effect porthole at its base. Sadly, the creator had to part with his creation. This custom built steampunk guitar gained public attention when it was sold on Ebay.

Here is the The Nautilus in action.

More Steampunk Guitars

(image credits:deviant art,,basmatiheather,Brian the Killer Penguin,veev)

Steampunk is popular with people in the punk, goth, Industrial, cybergoth, gamer, and geek subcultures. So popular, in fact, there is a growing movement towards steampunk as a lifestyle and culture. It has been around in other forms and other names since the sci-fi subgenre of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Here are more guitars with a Neo-Victorianism theme. Pictured at top left is The Blackwind. The top right steampunk guitar can be found on display outside a shop in Austin, Texas. The two steampunk guitars on the bottom are re-engineered Statocasters made for Maker Faire.

DIY Steampunk Guitars

(image credit:thumbrella,ellie guitars two,tyler savage,myles paul)

If you have a passion for guitars and music, then perhaps you too would like to get in on the action with a DIY steampunk guitar. The top left guitars are metal clad and steampunked by their creator to his degree of satisfaction. In the top right photo, you see a steampunk pipebomb guitar heart made with a Basswood body, patina paint, hardware, and surplus store supplies all over it. On the middle left, cyberpunk and rebellion produced this Steampunk guitar. The bottom guitar was built by one friend for another, both steampunk fans. Each guitar is a one-of-a-kind creation and there is still plenty of time before the holidays to DIY a steampunk guitar for you or a loved one.

Steampunk guns

(image credits:4 blogspot,amanda.scrivenerdeviant art,makezine,kordite)

If you are into guns, then you will probably love these. If not, then think sci-fi blended with the Victorian era. The sawed-off shotgun is from Steamgearlab, a Lilith shotgun and prop for a steampunk movie. On the top left, this little weapon is meant to represent Burlesque Steampunk or Apocalyptic bullet belt garters. On the right are gunblades, a style of gun often found in the steampunk culture. The bottom left photo is of a steampunk sonic rifle. On the bottom right, the Howdah pistol was produced by sawing the stock off a shotgun, then more or less of a hack job to the barrel.

Steampunk Revolvers

(image credits:deviant art)

All of the guns above are considered steampunk-style revolvers or pistols. From the retrofuturistic outlaw pistol to the the gentleman’s revolver, the only limit to creating these steampunk props are your imagination. Get ready to shoot ‘em up like a cowboy from the past time-traveling to the future. Although not steam-powered, these weapons may be powered by the souls of the enemies you cut down. Watch out for steampunk enthusiasts, whether with a stone cold heart of ice or just having some good ole-fashioned fun, who could draw and “shoot” in a blink of an eye.

Ray Guns

(image credits:tinkerbots,herrdokters)

If you like retrofuturistic sidearms, check out these ray guns. Tinkerbot seems an expert in pure Jules Verne creations, making weapons for an imaginary universe. Some of these collectible fantasy weapons include the Zenith which would take only one electro blast for piercing destruction. On the top right, wow, the toggle switch, gauges and other little gizmows from an old lamp would make short work of your enemies. Or lock and load the Sanitzer. Not sure what kind of death follows after a ray coming from the Pneumatic Aether Disperser, but it’s probably not a pretty sight. Herr Dokters created the bottom right ray gun and some of his other creations are to be on display at the Museum of Oxford Steampunk Art Exhibition.

Deadly Steampunk Guns

(image credits:salacioushydes,outa_spaceman,impulse labs,dr haggis,jmars design,Brandon McCullar,SteamPunk Creator)

Beware scoundrels and villians! From left to right, all of these steampunk guns are seriously wicked weapons, like the top Pirate Net Gun. Do not tick off the owner of Viper, a pneumatic machine gun. What mechanically inclined and avid pistoleer wouldn’t mind the fine company of a refined automatic revolver with an old world charm like the Mateba Unica? The Blunderbassoon has a forty watt range and is a weapon from a more civilized age. The large barrel is a single barrel N2O Blunderbuss. Whether or not you can tell from the bottom left photo, this steampunk sculpture art is a metal rifle ray gun that is 36″ long and 13.5″ tall. But it was the Annihilator that ranked as the judge’s favorite choice of shoulderarm with it’s indicator light and a range of over 550 meters.

Specialty Steampunk Guns

(image credits:Astra Goblin,CHAUSS513,CHAUSS513,outland armour,porkshanks)

If you run across a steampunk enthusiast with one of these guns, be prepared to surrender or to die! The photo on top is a massive steampunk ray gun. It’s unknown if the owner has it setup as a steampunk prop or as a working secret weapon. The top left picture is of the Double Twelve. It’s 10 feet long and a .12 gauge even if it appears to be capable of shooting planes out of the sky. The steampunk shotgun on the right weighs in at 65 pounds! Sure the enemy would be dead, if you could heft that sucker and fire it in time. On the bottom left are shiny and classy steampunk Flintlock Saber pistols.  On the bottom right, Deuces Wild are a destructive set of twins named Veracity and Florencia.

Indeed, steampunk culture and art seems to be everywhere. We hope you enjoyed these sexy as sin steampunk guns -n- gutars.

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For those who think that the glory-days of boat-building are over, think again – for there are modern-day Brunels, eager to build the next generation of ocean-faring superstructures. Here are 7 wondrous examples of epic modern ship design, from passenger liner to man o’ war, from staggeringly large to stealthily small – all demonstrating that when it comes to innovation, technology and breadth of ambition, the best designs are the ones making waves.

(Images via: Dark Roasted Blend)

Longer than the Eiffel Tower is tall, the Knock Nevis is a floating colossus with a fascinating history. Originally built in a Japanese shipyard for a Greek owner who couldn’t take delivery, the ship has had multiple owners, endured three name-changes and, while being used as a storage ship by Iran in 1988, been bombed and sunk by Iraqi jets. Today this near-half-kilometer-long behemoth can be seen permanently moored at the Al Shaheen oil fields, Qatar, where (as the Knock Nevis) it is being used as an FPSO.

(Image via: Relevant Search Scotland)

However, the title of Largest Ship In The World belongs to the Batillus-class supertankers of the late 1970s, each weighing in at around half a million tonnes deadweight. Massive they may have been, but all but one of these ships lasted less than a decade – the longest-lived was the Prairial, finally scrapped in Karachi in 2003.

(Image via: Oasis of the Seas)

Fancy sailing the world’s oceans atop a skyscraper? You’ll want to book passage on the Oasis of The Seas , the first in Royal Caribbean International’s new fleet of cruise ships…and the largest passenger vessel in the world.

(Images via: Oasis of the Seas)

Launched from Finland last month, the OotS is currently heading towards Fort Lauderdale on its maiden voyage. 70 meters high, 360 meters long and a whopping 225,000 tons (that is over four times heavier than the Titanic), it offers its passengers an astounding variety of luxuries including two-storey apartments, a mini golf course and an indoor park. Cruise travel gone mad?

(Images via: Crunch Gear via Ecofriend)

Attempting something a little eco-flashier is the Super Eco Ship 2030 (due to hit the seas in…well, have a guess). The ship is powered by hydrogen fuel cells and onboard solar and wind energy collectors – and with the help of a lightened, friction-reduced hull, the designed claim a 69% drop in carbon dioxide emissions compared with today’s container ships.

(Images via: Freedom Ship

Less a ship than a mindbogglingly huge chain of barges, the Freedom Ship is a vessel on a scale that even Roland Emmerich would raise an eyebrow at. It would house over 60,000 passengers (maybe even up to 100,000 at a squeeze) and would contain everything a modern community needs – even its own airport, turboprop-only. Where is it now? Lost in a sea of blueprints, without publicized investors (and at an estimated price of $11 billion this project needs a lot of them) and the target of accusations of scamming. If completed, the Freedom Ship would cruise round the world – and we have to ask, what exactly is it like to ride out a tropical storm in an oversized barge?

(Images via: 800HighTech)

Dear modern sea-pirates: how would you feel if one of these sidled alongside your scurvy vessel and ordered you to drop anchor? Meet the Visby-class stealth corvette, darling of the Swedish Navy.

(Images via: 800HighTech and Gizmodo)

Gizmodo likens them to waterborne Star Destroyers, and we see their point. These warships are designed to sneak under the radar at any distance above 13 miles in calm seas, thanks to advanced materials in its armored cladding and a greatly dampened electromagnetic footprint – and once up close, its guns, missiles, depth charges, torpedoes and grenade launchers would be sure to get the attention of even the most heavily-armed ship of hijackers.

(Image via: US Navy)

But for sea-policing at a disance, the prize goes to US Navy’s upcoming Zumwalt-class destroyer – a $3.3 billion, 21st-Century version of the ironclad. Thanks to stealth technologies its radar signature will be little larger than a fishing boat…

(Images via: US Navy and Wired)

…which would belie the truly formidable punch behind this hunter-killer, including an advanced gun system firing 10 rounds a minute to a range of 80 miles. Guided missiles can also be flung out the well-protected vertical launch tubes – and it has even been suggested that railguns and lasers might make up its future arsenal. For now, its cutting-edge nature means that a number of key technologies have yet to be fully developed. In every sense, this is a ship of the future.

(Images via: Inhabitat)

And last but not least, we have a ship that isn’t a ship at all – it’s a floating exhibition centre. This design, created for the 2012 World Expo in South Korea, is a pavilion with a difference…

(Images via: Inhabitat)

…because once the show is over, it can be detached from the shoreline and sailed elsewhere, drawn behind a tug. It may not be self-powered, but a ship it most definitely is – and one that would be towed around the South Korean coastline to wherever it is needed. The possibilities are intriguing: how about a theater where the venue goes on tour with the company? And is this the start of shipping that has a dual role, embedded in the seaward sides of our cities to perform an entirely different service to the community?

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