The guys over at Art From Steel create over 450 different creatures out of recycled steel, ranging from Wall-E to the Terminator to Gundam and everyone in between. While the small sculptures might be assembled from just a few parts, some of the larger ones are built from over 2,000 components and take up to 12 craftsmen and 30 days to build. Check out the image gallery below to see some of my favorites. I love that Edward Scissorhands!

Sculptures range in price from as little as $46 bucks for a mini Wall-E, all the way up to $4000 bucks for an insanely detailed Alien. You can find the entire metal menagerie over on the Art From Steel website.

Don’t see your favorite character? That’s okay, they’re happy to do custom commissions. Me? I’m looking for a giant steel Q-Bert and Dig Dug for my front lawn.

[thanks for the tip, Jay!]

Is this Gundam with a taste for lace a noble ally? or could it be a fearsome foe? Is it cute or is it stupid?

If you need more pictures to decide, go to MotoCity. If you’ve had enough, may I recommend a video of Tsuki the cat slithering down a staircase.

[via Forever Geek]

It has three propellers that are powered by three 550-watt motors, giving the ship a cruising speed of 5 mph on “calm water”. On rough, icy seas, it will dramatically sink, whilst a recorded orchestra plays. Kidding. The ship has two rechargeable batteries that lasts up to 3 hours between charges. I don’t know where all the Titanic love is coming from, but one thing’s for sure: Titanic love ain’t messin’ with no broke fellas. It sells for $2,500 USD at Hammacher Schlemmer.

[via Likecool]

Even if it were possible to count the number of hours I wasted on games like OutRun, I wouldn’t want to. The results would be less than glamorous (and might remind me that I could own that BMW by now if I’d saved all those quarters). Would I want a constant reminder of that on my desk? Yes, yes I would. It’s just so cute!

The Sega Taikan Game Collection will be available this fall, and includes five different games: Space Harrier, Super Hang-On, OutRun, Thunderblade and Afterburner. Now if only they were playable….

[Hobby Media via Retro Thing]

The statue is a life-size model of the RX-78-2 Gundam that appeared in the very first Gundam series, a model from which most successive Gundam designs get their iconic samurai-style appearance.

The Gundam statue is made of fiberglass-reinforced plastic over a steel frame. It will be 59 feet tall and weigh 35 tons when finished, and will “emit light or mist from 50 points of its body.”

The statue will also be able to move its head, so that it can shake it in disbelief at the undoubtedly millions of otakus, fans, and devotees that will come bearing offerings, hugging it and crying at its feet, some claiming to be its long-lost children.

I hope to be one of those drooling man-children. I absolutely really truly must go and see this Gundam. Really.

The statue will be displayed in public from July 11 to August 31, free of charge. Mark your calendars, fellow mecha freaks.

[via robots dreams and anime news network]

While it turns out this NES-inspired mouse is just a foam model, somebody needs to put these into production now. Nintendo, are you listening? For now, I guess you’ll just have to settle for one of these.

[via zeniouz]

You know you’ve got a truly badass weapon on your hands when it looks amazing despite lens flare (and being made of cardboard). Through a few mutilated limbs in there or something and you’ve got a Saw movie pretty authentic recreation.

But what painstaking re-creation of a gaming weapon would be complete without a YouTube video documenting the process? This one. So here’s your video.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

[via deviantART]

The SuperHeadz Plamodel 35mm camera kit lets you snap together your camera using die-cut pieces that are reminiscent of the first time you built a model car or airplane when you were a kid.

When you’re all done putting the 30-odd pieces of the Plamodel kit together, it should look something like this:

Or if you’re less mechanically-inclined, something like this:

Yeah, yeah, I know. In a world of ever-increasing megapixels, who cares about a cheap plastic 35mm camera? I do. After all, if I took my Nikon apart into a bunch of pieces, I’d never get it back together.

If you like to tinker, you can find the Plamodel camera kit over at Unica Home for $17 USD.

J & C Studios makes these teeny, tiny retro arcade machine models built to O-Scale proportions. Each 1.75″ tall game cabinet snaps together from laser-cut black styrene, and offer a place for you to put a grain-of-wheat or LED bulb behind the screen so it can light up.

J & C offers self-stick decal kits for Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Centipede, Zaxxon, Phoenix and Defender, but you could certainly make your own custom labels using a color printer if you wanted. Me, I want a miniature BattleZone machine. And if you’re feeling even more retro, they’ve got super small pinball machines too.

The arcade machines are just $7.49 (USD) a piece and the pinball machines will run you $6.49 each. You can find them over at the J & C Studios website. With a little work, you could probably stick a circuit board and an LCD screen inside one of these if you really wanted to go to town.

Deacon also had the floor painted with imagery that could only be described as Capcom-tastic. It had a giant Pac-Man screen rendered in black, blue, and yellow.

While most of the actual clothing was not Pac-Man, there was this glittery frock rife with pastel Pac-mania.

No report as to whether they used wockawockawocka sound effects as the models took the stage…

[via If It's Hip, It's Here]

3D3 Solutions’ FlexScan3D lets you use an ordinary LCD projector and digital camera to help produce wireframes that can be imported into 3D computer graphics programs for use in art, animation, or rapid prototyping. Scans take just seconds, and can measure complex surfaces with an accuracy of +/- .01 inches and over 1 million points per scan.

Since the scanning technique projects a grid onto the target object and captures from the front, you can’t produce output that wraps around 360-degrees without stitching together multiple meshes. Good thing that 3D3 also makes a program called Leios Mesh, which helps you do this. As an added bonus for using digital cameras to capture the wireframe, you also can extract matching texture masks automagically.

The basic solution starts at $1499, but by the time you add on a projector and digital camera (if you don’t have these floating around somewhere already), the total cost of the system would be closer to $2500. Plan on spending close to $3000 if you want the version with Leios Mesh and other stitching automation tools.

Still it’s the least expensive way I can think of to capture large or unwieldy objects, since other low cost systems like the NextEngine ($2495) can only capture items about the size of a shoebox. Of course, if you’re really, really cheap, and don’t mind spending alot of time cleaning up your 3D objects, check out David 3D, which costs the low, low price of free.

While it’s some pretty amazing graphic work, “real” Mario isn’t quite as endearing as he’s been in previous incarnations. Created by compositing a variety of real facial details and textures in Photoshop CS2 on top of a 3D model from Nintendo, the guy is just plain creepy.

I can’t decide if it’s the scraggly facial hair or the bulbous, slightly bloodshot eyeballs that will keep me up tonight. This is definitely not the kind of Mario that you’d want your kids playing with.

[via TechEBlog]

This off-the-wall creative project takes items seen in the 3D virtual world of Second Life, and transforms them into real-world (paper) objects.

Export to World is a concept created by Linda Kostowski and Sascha Pohflepp which converts the oddly-textured 3D computer objects and turns them into papercraft models which can be assembled with scissors and glue.

There’s a complete gallery of models they’ve converted so far over on Flickr. PDFs of the paper cutouts are available here. They also offer some tips and tricks for exporting your own paper models.

[via MAKE]

Model makers Fabjectory are offering a service which will take your Mii avatar and output a real-life miniature figurine. Simply upload a picture of your Mii, and they’ll create either a 3-inch figure ($50) or a 5-inch figure ($100). Each model is made from thousands of layers of color-infused plaster using their Z-Corp digital prototyping equipment.

If you’re not a Nintendo Wii fan, Fabjectory can also generate 3D models from your Second Life avatar or from a SketchUp model.

[via Dave Curry via Make]

Three designs are available (the Goliathon 83 Infinity Beam Projector , Manmelter 3600ZX Sub-Atomic Disintegrator Pistol and the FMOM Industries Wave Disrupter Gun) and each gun will be made in a limited series of only 500 each. They’re made from metal, glass and other materials, and each one weighs in at over 7 pounds, so they’re definitely not cheaply made.

Each raygun comes in a custom distressed, velvet lined tin case with a certificate of authenticity from the artist. Priced at over $600 each, these are for serious sci-fi collectors only.

[via uncrate]